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Parliamentary evening: 10 years Gesundes Kinzigtal – role model for the future of health care
Parliamentary evening: 10 years Gesundes Kinzigtal – role model for the future of health carePolicy makers and health care experts agree that care has to be become more integrated and patient centered to master the growing challenges of the demographic change. Regional structures become increasingly important. Innovative care models, such as Gesundes Kinzigtal, can provide valuable impetus. This has been the conclusion of the parliamentary evening of the Gesundes Kinzigtal GmbH, MQNK e.V. and the OptiMedis AG on June, 6 in Berlin. The new state secretary of the Ministry for Social Affairs and Integration of Baden-Württemberg, Bärbl Mielich, highlighted in her welcoming speech: „The Ministry of Social Affairs and Integration supports the Gesundes Kinzigtal model. We are convinced that Gesundes Kinzigtal is a role model for Baden-Württemberg for regional accountable care. The holistic, cross-sectoral, intraprofessional and innovative concept of Gesundes Kinzigtal provides a new approach for comprehensive care and empowers patients. This is, in our opinion, a promising model for the future. ” Other speakers of the parliamentary evening were the Members of the German Parliament Hilde Mattheis (SPD), Dr Harald Terpe (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and Kordula Kovac (CDU), representatives of the two cooperating statutory health insurers AOK and LKK Baden-Württemberg, as well as the health care expert Prof. Dr Gerd Glaeske (see photo left).
Prof. Dr Gerd Glaske stressed “Sustainability, efficiency and quality is becoming increasingly important in a progressively ageing society”. Innovative care models can lead to better health care outcomes and costs, as the results of Gesundes Kinzigtal show. A quasi-experimental study showed 617 fewer years of potential life lost in the Gesundes Kinzigtal intervention group vs. the control group. In addition, the latest evaluation by the PMV Research Institute of the University of Cologne highlights the quality of drug therapy in Kinzigtal and illustrates the reduction of over- and undertreatment in selected indications. In Kinzigtal, high quality of care goes hand in hand with improving the economy. For the seventh consecutive year, Gesundes Kinzigtal was able to improve its contribution margin. In 2013 this amounted to Euro 5.5 million for the 33,000 members of the two partner insurance funds, AOK and LKK Baden-Württemberg. On average, every member costs Euro 170 less than the national average. The improvement in the contribution margin can be ascribed to the difference between the expected costs (Euro 75.5 million) and the actual cost of members in Kinzigtal.
Dr h.c. Helmut Hildebrandt, CEO of the OptiMedis AG and the Gesundes Kinzigtal GmbH, underlined the importance of Gesundes Kinzigtal as a lab for innovative care elements and an approach to move from a volume to a value based payment system: “The ten-year intervention in Kinzigtal provides higher quality and more efficient care for the insurees. We want to scale up the model to other regions, also by utilizing the newly established innovation fund in Germany.” The AOK Baden-Württemberg that has extended the Gesundes Kinzigtal contract for an unlimited period in the beginning of 2016, reviews this matter. The CEO of the AOK Baden-Württemberg, Dr Christopher Hermann, emphasized ahead of the event: “Gesundes Kinzigtal has proved its worth as innovative care model. As a result, we are currently planning a tender for the implementation of care models similar to Gesundes Kinzigtal in other regions of Baden-Württemberg.” Also the LKK is interested in scaling up the Gesundes Kinzigtal model, as CEO Reinhold Knittel confirms: “The tailor-made care solutions are especially valuable for our insurees because of their working conditions. We would appreciate to offer these advantages also to other regions.” Dr h.c. Helmut Hildebrandt calculates that the German health care system could achieve net savings of approximately 240 million €, if only five percent of all insurees covered by statutory health insurance in Germany were managed in a value- and populationbased integrated care model. If 20% of all insurees were covered the total net savings would add up to 961 million Euro (see Figure below).
