Valley Health System joins NJ Healthcare Transformation Consortium

Jessica Perry//September 12, 2022//

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The Healthcare Transformation Consortium has another member: Valley Health System.

The Ridgewood-based provider announced Sept. 12 that it joined the group, a collaborative that works together to advance health care services for employees and dependents.

According to HTC, its members collectively provide medical benefits to nearly 75,000 employees and families in the state. In addition to newly added Valley Health, the current roster of members also includes:

Atlantic Health System,
CentraState Healthcare System,
Holy Name Medical Center,
Hunterdon Healthcare,
Saint Peter’s Healthcare System,
and Virtua Health.

Valley leaders said they were excited to join the group.

Valley Health System CEO Audrey Meyers. — Meyers

“We look forward to working with the Consortium to offer our staff and their dependents enhanced medical benefits, and we hope to develop and implement additional Consortium strategies to innovate the care we provide to all those we serve,” Audrey Meyers, president and CEO of Valley Health System, said in a statement.

The Consortium collectively bid out for third-party administration of its self-insured employee health plans, which it said brought significant improvements across medical, dental and employee wellness offerings.

Valley said it will adopt the provider – Aetna – for its medical benefits in 2023.

Dr. Robert Brenner, Valley’s president, Clinical Integration and Physician Enterprise, said the opportunity affords his system the chance to work with “individuals who are among the best in the field to improve Valley’s services for both our employees, their family members, and the broader community.”

Both Meyers and Brenner will serve on the Consortium’s CEO board of managers, while Vice President for Payer Strategies Nisha Sikder will serve on the Consortium’s Strategic Executive Council.

“Valley’s participation … could not come at a better time, as shifting health care policy, advances in health information technology, and continued evolution of payment models require increasing collaboration and partnership with our peers,” Sikder said. “HTC really is the perfect forum to enable this type of engagement in our state.”

HTC said beyond health care systems, it hopes to be able to expand its model to other state-based employers. And the Consortium is working to establish partnerships with key health care innovation companies to contract directly with providers — as it recently did to offer employees access to services at all Recovery Centers of America — and has a long-term vision of developing an aligned network of physician groups to broaden its offering of services statewide.

Atlantic Health led the launch of the group in 2018.