Nineteen rural Minnesota hospitals and their 50-plus clinics have banded together to form a clinically integrated network (CIN) serving more than 750,000 people.
The so-called Headwaters High-Value Network, announced Thursday, stitches the independent hospitals’ services together so that Minnesotans can coordinate their care across care sites. Together, the member groups employ about 9,000 people and bring in $1.3 billion of annual net revenue.
Members of the network also said the approach will help their hospitals control rising care costs through reduced administrative burden and shared services. The CIN said it is “in discussions” with other interested rural Minnesota hospitals and “expects to grow.”
“The members of the Headwaters network believe that helping rural hospitals to remain independent is the best way to serve the healthcare needs of our communities,” Ken Westman, chair of the newly formed Headwaters board and CEO of Aitkin, Minnesota-based member hospital Riverwood Healthcare Center, said in a statement. “We also believe that our independence is strengthened by our interdependence. The more we can work together, the better we can care for our communities.”
The “menu” of services the CIN’s members will share could include tools for population health, data analytics and care management, Headwaters said in its announcement.
The CIN’s seven-member board is comprised of CEOs from the member hospitals. The network is also forming a clinical integration committee, staffed by a medical practitioner from each member hospital, to oversee the partnership’s clinical and quality initiatives.
“Everyone involved with Headwaters has a great sense of collaboration, a high ‘collaborative IQ,’ that will help us sustain independent hospitals for the long term,” Westman said.
Quarterbacking the partnership is Cibolo Health, the principals of which will be handling the network’s day-to-day management needs. The advisory group, per its website, pitches itself and its CINs to independent rural hospitals as the healthcare equivalent to “farmers’ cooperatives, giving member hospitals the scale needed to gain a seat at the table with health plans and large health systems.”
The group also highlights the unfavorable financial situation many of the nation’s rural hospitals are in. As of the top of 2024, about half were losing money from their operations and a fifth were vulnerable to closure, according to a report penned by healthcare advisory services firm Chartis earlier this year.
Headwaters High-Value Network marks Cibolo’s second rural CIN, following last fall’s formation of the Rough Rider High-Value Network.
That North Dakota partnership stands to reach about a third of the patients as Headwaters but tallies 23 hospitals and 41 clinics. It also purports to streamline administrative burdens, bolster care collaboration and improve care delivery via a member-represented clinical integration committee.
“Pooling the clinical know-how of our members through the Clinical Integration Committee ensures continued access to high-quality care that strengthens the vitality of rural communities,” A. Clinton MacKinney, M.D., Cibolo Health’s chief medical officer, said in a statement. “The [Clinical Integration Committee] relieves some of the burden on physicians and gives them a supportive peer community, which will help our member hospitals recruit and retain clinicians.”