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To draw patients to its downtown hospitals, Indiana University Health has used hospital acquisitions, physician employment and statewide advertising.
Now, it's simply offering to give patients a ride.
IU Health effectively started its own ambulance service in December by adding two ambulances to its long-standing LifeLine critical-care service and opening a call center to help other health care providers figure out what level of transport services a particular patient needs.
IU Health leaders think the centralized call service can improve their relationship with hospitals in Terre Haute, Columbus, Richmond and elsewhere, bringing more patients to IU Health.
That was the same basic goal IU Health had as it acquired 10 hospitals from 2002 to 2011, as it folded more than 1,550 physicians into its own IU Health Physicians, and as it changed its name in 2011 from Clarian to IU Health and launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign.
"We're going to pick up a little bit of that business," said Scott Brenton, IU Health's vice president of ambulatory services, referring to the non-emergency transports of patients between hospitals, nursing homes and surgery centers. "And we can do it at a lower cost than we reimburse others for providing those services."
IU Health also hopes to help patients get the right level of care even before they arrive at an IU Health facility.
But longer term, IU Health executives hope their call center gives them insights into how medical transport changes under the pressures of health care reform.
With the federal Medicare program and private health insurers pressing hospitals to keep patients out of the hospital, to send them home sooner, and to reduce the number who come back, transporting sick patients effectively to and from lower-cost health care facilities could become a key, low-cost way to meet those demands.
Doug Leonard, president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said some hospitals in other states are even sending paramedics to check on patients in their homes, before they even need an ambulance.
Before the December expansion, the IU Health LifeLine service operated six helicopters and six "mobile ICUs" - ambulances with extra equipment and higher-level staff that provide...