The following is an excerpt from a laudatory editorial in the Pittsburgh Post – Gazette concerning “further collaboration” between the Allegheny Health Network and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore:
“Joint practice: AHN and Johns Hopkins broaden their affiliation”
…The new 10-year master collaboration agreement, which was unveiled Monday, aims to expand patient options for affordable health care, use group purchasing and other initiatives to reduce costs, enable AHN to improve care by tapping the resources of Johns Hopkins’ Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, and let both organizations team up on new electronic record platforms and various research efforts. The pact will not involve the exchange of any dollars.
AHN’s chief medical officer, Tony Farah, said he expects that, under the arrangement, his health system and its Baltimore, Md.-based partner will end up working in other clinical areas besides oncology.
This kind of multipronged affiliation is the wave of the future in a medical landscape, both locally and nationally, that is becoming more competitive and more cost-conscious at the same time it makes new treatments and technologies available for patient care…
If this is what Lancaster General Hospital has in mind, why don’t they tell us so. True, it is hard for ‘old dogs to learn new tricks’, but it is high time that Lancaster General’s officers and trustees stop treating the citizenry and the Lancaster media as ignoramuses and enemies by conducting the public foundation’s business in utmost privacy.
