Posted on 10/18/2009 5:12:49 AM PDT by gusopol3
In fact, Geisinger, touted by Obama as a health system that offers "high-quality care at costs below average," has gotten so popular that it started offering group tours. It expects more than 70 visitors from insurance companies and health systems this week.
"We were consuming ourselves with entertaining," said Howard Grant, a former Temple University Health System chief medical officer who became Geisinger's chief medical officer in 2008.
"People from all reaches of the country are trying to understand how what we do translates to their world."
What visitors find in the wooded hills of Danville, population 4,450, is a seriously wired health system that has made saving money and improving quality a priority. It has been aided by a relative lack of competition, its stable patient base, and the fact that its 800 doctors are on salary. It owns its own health-insurance plan and pharmacy.
That's a rare combination of factors that makes outsiders question how much of Geisinger's success can apply to the rest of the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
How many illegals to they have to provide for?
So the town’s population is 4,450 and they have 800 doctors on salary?
(just read the lead in)...
It’s in the part of PA that James Carville refers to as “Alabama,” so maybe fewer than many other places.
It’s definitely a regional center, that area of PA is very thinly populated.
How can it be inexpensive to have 1 doctor for every 5.6 people? There’s something seriously missing here.
Between Scranton/ Wilkes-Barre on the eastern border of PA, all the way across to Erie, all across the northern tier of counties of Pennsylvania, there are no population centers that would support a tertiary care center, so their catchment are is huge. On this map:http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/, if you click on Pennsylvania, you can get a good estimate of the population of these counties, northeastern and northern tier( Danville may be Sullivan County, I’m not sure; it’s on I-80)by their vote totals( remember Leip has stuck with the old custom of Republican in blue, Democrat red).
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