Healthcare philanthropies and two major health systems have announced a 30-year, $700 million collaboration to grow value-based specialty and virtual care in Northwest Arkansas.
The Alice L. Walton Foundation, the Heartland Whole Health Institute and Mercy said their new affiliation will include the construction of a new cardiac care center of excellence, an outpatient center of excellence for specialty care and “additional opportunities to expand care in the region.”
Also involved is the Cleveland Clinic, which is lending its clinical expertise and brand to the effort.
“We believe that everyone deserves quality whole healthcare closer to home,” says philanthropist Alice Walton, founder of the Heartland Whole Health Institute and the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine. “This powerful collaboration with Mercy and Cleveland Clinic will change the health care landscape in the Heartland, bringing together organizations that are dedicated to increasing quality, reducing costs and making accessible, value-based care a reality.”
St. Louis-based Mercy’s $350 million commitment to the affiliation will establish the cardiac center on its Rogers, Arkansas, campus and help support recruitment of “hundreds” of physicians.
Additionally, that location will be cobranded with Cleveland Clinic, which will be helping Mercy establish processes, best practices and a “culture of innovation,” according to the announcement.
Meanwhile, the Alice L. Walton Foundation’s $350 million investment will bring together an outpatient specialty care center the announcement notes will bring new cardiac and virtual care services to Bentonville, Arkansas. The money will also help bolster the supply of physicians in the region and is described by the organizations as “one of the largest-ever specialty care investments in the Heartland.”
The partners say their new centers will prioritize value-based payment initiatives and preventive whole health principles that take patients’ physical, mental, emotional and social well-being into account during care. Of note, the $8 billion Mercy bills itself as one of the nation’s largest and best performing accountable care organizations in the country, logging more than $250 million of savings for the government over the past half decade.
Bringing those priorities to the collaboration will help the partners reduce total cost of care and improve quality, they said.
“We are at the beginning of a decades-long relationship to transform health care,” Steve Mackin, president and CEO of Mercy, said in a statement. “Healthcare has become increasingly complex, but we are committed to working closely with Alice and her teams to innovate a new model of care—one that reduces the total cost of healthcare while increasing the quality of care and providing access for all. … We are excited about bringing significantly enhanced, broad specialty care to Northwest Arkansas, while continuing to create meaningful and lasting change in the region.”
The terms of the agreement name Mercy as the primary educational partner for the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, a to-be-accredited four-year medical degree program founded in 2021.
The partners’ announcement also touted the economic benefits for the region, noting that $950 million is lost annually when patients living in northwest Arkansas go elsewhere for their specialty care.
“Providers and patients alike benefit when the traditional approach to care and physician reimbursement is abandoned for a model that prioritizes keeping patients healthy and costs down,” Walter Harris, president and CEO of the Heartland Whole Health Institute, said in the announcement. “This is just the beginning of what we will accomplish together.”