In a partnership that appears to be the first of its kind, Anthem Blue Cross, a large California health insurance company, is teaming up with seven fiercely competitive hospital groups to create a new health system in the Los Angeles area. The partnership includes such well-known medical centers as UCLA Health and Cedars-Sinai.
Anthem and the hospital groups plan to announce on Wednesday the formation of a joint venture whose aim is to provide the level of coordinated, high-quality and efficient care that is now associated with only a handful of integrated health systems like Kaiser Permanente in California, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah and Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania.
Anthem, like those systems, will offer relatively low-cost health insurance coverage to patients who use hospitals and clinics that are part of the plan.
But the Anthem venture, for the first time, includes hospitals that are competitors and are not owned by the plan itself. Anthem will continue to offer other health plans, and the hospital groups will continue to have arrangements with other insurers.
