Denver Health offers model of hope

Denver Health offers model of hope

August 26, 2009

By: Allison Sherry

There is a reason Max Baucus and a number of other senators can't stop ringing Dr. Patti Gabow's cellphone.

Denver Health offers model of hope

August 26, 2009

By: Allison Sherry

There is a reason Max Baucus and a number of other senators can't stop ringing Dr. Patti Gabow's cellphone.

Though nearly half her patients are without health insurance, the chief executive of Denver Health Medical Center has consistently kept her system's books in the black.

The hospital has one of the lowest mortality rates in the nation, and 92 percent of the child patients are immunized. Sixty-one percent of heart patients have high blood pressure under control, compared with 34 percent nationally.

"You may ask if we are doing so well and meeting patients' needs, why am I here supporting health reform?" she said in a recent U.S. House of Representatives committee hearing. "The answer is straightforward. As a safety-net physician leader, I see every day that America is failing to meet people's health care needs."

Since the health care reform negotiations started in Washington last spring, Gabow has traveled between Denver and the nation's capital testifying on committees, serving on panels and meeting with people — including Montana Democratic Sen. Baucus — trying to craft a bill to overhaul the nation's health care system.

"I'm a broken record saying the same thing," she said. "We need health reform desperately. We have issues in this country with three things: access, cost and quality. We really need to fix all three of these issues, and we cannot sustain paying twice as much as every other developed country."

The Denver Health system, which tightly incorporates all kinds of care — including a detox center and a poison control center — is more efficient than other hospitals, in part, because of a $300 million health information technology system.

The hospital's doctors are all employed there and have no financial incentive to order unnecessary tests. Gabow said they keep costs down by "getting patients to the right place at the right time with the right level of care, with the right provider and the right financial incentives."

Though the hospital has consistently made a small profit, the model is unsustainable, Gabow says.

In 2007, Denver Health provided $275 million in uninsured care. That number in 2009 is projected to be $360 million.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, of Denver, who has hosted Gabow in Washington, said she wishes she could "bottle up what Denver Health is doing and make that our health care reform."

"It's a unique and powerful message of how we can reform health care and still provide high quality," DeGette said. "There are a lot of lessons they teach us every day."