San Mateo County is responsible for providing medical care to its population. SMMC is a general acute care hospital and does not provide certain highly specialized services. A contract with Mills-Peninsula Health Services ensures that specialty services are readily available.
Services provided under this agreement are required medical services that are not presently provided at San Mateo Medical Center. The majority of the 5% of patient referrals to Mills-Peninsula are for inpatient cardiac and outpatient vascular services. Examples of other services include higher resolution Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and cardiac catheterization.
All patients referred to Mills-Peninsula Health Services undergo utilization review to minimize hospital stays and maintain control over costs. Comprehensive per diem rates are negotiated as part of tertiary care contracts to account for patient transitions through each level of care, including intensive (ICU), telemetry (step down), stabilized (med/surg), observation, and eventual discharge. The negotiated per diem rates are 3% less than those received by SMMC from the Health Plan of San Mateo (HPSM). Some of these rates were negotiated, for future contracting and retroactively to January 1, 2007 through June 30, 2007 which will result in lower costs to SMMC. The rate for one of these specialized procedure, cardiac catherization, which is now a significantly required service needed by our patients, was identified as an opportunity for renegotiation and considerable annual savings when implemented with all of the hospital contracts.
The term of the agreement is two years from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2007. County Counsel has reviewed and approved this amendment to the agreement.
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