Critics of America鈥檚 health care system say it鈥檚 really a 鈥渟ick care鈥� system. Doctors and hospitals only get paid for treating people when they鈥檙e sick.
But that鈥檚 starting to change. Health insurance companies and big government payers like Medicare are starting to reward doctors and hospitals for .
So, many health care companies are trying to position themselves as organizations that help people stay well.
Nurse Steve Belcher, left, works with patient Antoinette Swearinger at the DaVita Downtown Dialysis Center in Baltimore in 2013. DaVita, spurred by potential growth in the market is expanding into hospital care. (AP Photo/The Daily Record, Maximilian Franz)
One of the latest is , a provider of kidney dialysis services. The company operates 2,152 dialysis centers in the U.S. and 87 in its fast-growing .
DaVita is making a move into primary care, and it just announced a joint venture with a hospital company in Colorado and Kansas.
DaVita says it鈥檚 like changing the company from being an electrician into a general contractor. 鈥淎nd in so doing,鈥� he says, 鈥淸We] have a much more comprehensive impact on how the house gets designed, how it gets built, how it gets maintained for the betterment of those who live in the house. That鈥檚 the simplest way to characterize the change.鈥�
DaVita鈥檚 partner in the new venture is , the biggest hospital company in Colorado. Like DaVita, it is also expanding aggressively into primary care and services beyond hospital-based procedures.
Centura says that in order for his company to keep people healthy, it needs the ability to crunch lots of health data. The idea is to use computer systems to keep track of peoples鈥� health, and flag health problems before they happen. He says DaVita HealthCare Partners is really good at that.
鈥淥ur physicians have gone scouring around the country, and believe that Health Care Partners really has the premier analytics.鈥�
So, if DaVita wants to grow substantially beyond the current 168,000 dialysis patients it serves now, it needs to expand beyond just kidney care, says Mark Stephens with . In 2012, the company started buying big doctors practices in several states. It鈥檚 hoping that its experience caring for very sick dialysis patients will help it manage family practices, and now, make hospitals more efficient.
Stephens also says DaVita might also be trying to create a model for Medicare to follow. That agency currently picks up the tab for about 85 percent of all Americans getting dialysis. He says Medicare has been offering dialysis companies opportunities to assume responsibility for those patients鈥� health care beyond dialysis, but that the companies haven鈥檛 found the deals attractive so far.
If DaVita鈥檚 new joint venture is successful, and it lowers the cost of care for both dialysis patients and those who aren鈥檛 as sick, the company may be able to win lots of new business from Medicare and private insurance companies.