CommonSpirit Health Establishes Population Health Services Organization to Accelerate Value-Based Care Best Practices Nationwide

Representing one of the largest and most diverse payer portfolios in the US, the PHSO aims to increase access to equitable care, improve quality and outcomes, and lower costs for millions of patients

CHICAGO – September 20, 2023 – CommonSpirit Health today launched a national value-based services platform, Population Health Services Organization (PHSO), focused on expanding access to equitable care, improving quality and outcomes, and lowering the cost of care. The PHSO will provide services such as advanced population health analytics, network management, care coordination, data management and analytics, technology infrastructure, reporting and more to help providers and provider networks excel in value-based care. 

CommonSpirit Health serves urban and rural communities across 24 states, and is one of the nation’s largest providers of Medicare and Medicaid services. As a result, CommonSpirit’s PHSO will serve a more diverse payer portfolio than any other management services organization nationwide, improving equitable health outcomes by supporting the delivery of high-quality, affordable and coordinated care for millions of patients across the country. 

“The PHSO is a natural extension of our mission and longstanding commitment to providing high quality, equitable care and addressing social determinants of health,” said Wright Lassiter III, CEO, CommonSpirit Health. “We are leveraging the national scale of CommonSpirit and our expertise in value-based care across diverse, community-based health system environments in order to elevate the standard for health care in the U.S. and help providers succeed in value-based care.”

The PHSO is designed to foster collaboration between independent and employed providers by supporting networks that are inclusive of both. These high-performing networks of physicians will result in elevated quality care for every patient. Today, half of the providers engaged in CommonSpirit value-based agreements are not employed by CommonSpirit, a part of the network the PHSO only anticipates will grow more in the future.

Value-based care prioritizes value of care over the volume of care provided. It is a health care delivery model that rewards holistic and coordinated care across the continuum to improve health status, quality and equity. It is often driven by value-based contractual agreements that are designed to incentivize providers to achieve better outcomes, quality, and patient experience while lowering the total cost of care. The demand for value-based agreements by payers and providers is also increasing. For example, CMS has stated that the vast majority of Medicaid and all Medicare beneficiaries will be in a value-based care relationship by 2030. 

The PHSO will build off the expertise from CommonSpirit’s existing value-based programs, which include full Risk-Bearing Organizations (RBOs) and 10 Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) across the nation with a proven track record of success, and more than 2.6 million covered lives. Over the past five years of participation in the MSSP, CommonSpirit has saved Medicare more than $474 million by prioritizing proactive outreach and addressing not only medical, but also behavioral and social needs. 

 “We serve diverse communities that include Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial insurance which means our data are more representative of America than other models primarily focused on commercial insurance. Coupled with our reach across 24 states, we can use the data and tools and access to a broad patient population to take on critical national health issues that require the size, scale and depth that we can deliver,” said Thomas McGinn, MD, MPH, Executive Vice President, Physician Enterprise at CommonSpirit Health. “For example, we can leverage data to understand patterns in testing, referrals, and treatment to develop interventions that reduce viral infections like Hepatitis C which disproportionately impact our most vulnerable populations.”