The best-known names in medicine can draw patients from far beyond their home cities — and that is the strategy at UC San Diego Health System, which is making moves to broaden its connections with hospitals and doctors outside of the county.
In recent weeks, the university has brokered a hospital-management deal in El Centro and is in talks with a facility near Palm Springs. Those two won’t be the last partnership deals, said Paul Viviano, the health system’s chief executive.
“There will be more to come for sure and relatively soon,” he said.
Reaching beyond San Diego is partly about coping with the changing incentives of health-care reimbursement and partly about wanting the region’s only academic medical center to grow its national reputation, Viviano explained.
There’s no reason the UC San Diego brand should not be as well-known and prestigious in the medical world as Vanderbilt, Emory and Duke universities’, he said during a recent interview in his Hillcrest office.
“We think that by executing this strategy, we have the opportunity to be of a big enough scale, scope and magnitude to begin to earn that kind of national reputation,” Viviano said.
But do not confuse ambition with aggression.
The deals the university is making these days are quite collaborative.
When Viviano first came to town in 2012 after a stint running a national radiology company, he quickly shut down plans to build a $205 million proton cancer treatment center. Instead, he chose to work with Scripps Health to share a facility paid for by private investors.
More recently, Scripps and UC San Diego announced that they would cooperate to create a new hospice training program.
And this month, the university announced a management agreement with El Centro Regional Medical Center to help the 161-bed hospital in Imperial County revamp some of its programs and increase its quality ratings.
Though an assessment is still ongoing, Viviano said it is likely that some UC San Diego faculty will be stationed there to extend clinical trials and help bolster existing service lines.
Another similar deal is in the works for Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage. While some have reported that the collaboration focuses on cancer, neither organization is ready to provide details until their agreement is finalized.
In both cases, and in similar deals under development, UC San Diego is not seeking to buy facilities in other counties. Rather, the plan is to supplement existing resources at those sites with faculty, equipment and quality protocols.
Viviano said there is no reason the university needs to own, or even have its name on, every building where its influence is felt.
“We think we can collaborate with Rady and Scripps and Sharp and Kaiser and with hospitals and doctors outside San Diego, cobble that together with our academic mission, and distinguish ourselves,” he said.
Referrals approach
This approach is not just about helping other operators improve their quality. Clinical services contracts with each facility ask for a specific consideration.
“What we request in return, and it’s only a request, is that for services they don’t provide — things like heart transplants, liver transplants, major surgical oncology procedures — we would ask that they use us,” Viviano said.
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