New England Baptist Hospital is now a preferred provider for hip and knee replacements for General Electric's 100,000 employees nationwide.
This is the first kind of large employer partnership for Roxbury Crossing, Mass.-based New England Baptist. It's the seventh of its kind for GE, which has already named six other preferred hospitals for joint care in other states. GE relocated its headquarters to Boston this year from Fairfield, Conn., bringing about 5,000 employees to Massachusetts.
GE will directly contract with the hospital, which will operate under bundled payments that cover care spanning 60 days.
GE will waive out-of-pocket costs and travel expenses for employees who opt to have surgery at the hospital. The company has potential to save money given New England Baptist's quality and outcomes for orthopedic care. If there are complications within the 60 days of the bundled payment period, there's no other charge to GE aside from the bundle amount, Virginia Proestakes, GE's program leader of health operations, told The Boston Globe.