Last week, The New York Times reported on the Obama Administration’s push to disclose payments that doctors receive from drug makers and medical device companies. And this past Saturday, The Boston Globe weighed in with an editorial in favor of this new federal disclosure plan as well. At Partners HealthCare, we support this level of transparency. The relationship between the academic medical community and the medical industry is fundamentally important for translating scientific advances into patient care improvements. However, this relationship must be managed in a way that assures and preserves the actual – and perceived – integrity of our research, education and patient-care activities.

In 2009, Partners introduced a sweeping set of recommendations to ensure the ongoing integrity of our relationship with the medical industry while earning the public’s confidence. Our policies now prohibit certain types of activities, such as participation in speakers bureaus or ghost-writing articles on behalf of the industry. These policies also impose more oversight on the outside activities of our senior institutional officials, as well as on industry-funded educational programs, to ensure that these relationships are managed appropriately. At the same time, they encourage and recognize the importance of maintaining our decades-long tradition of medical innovation through scientific partnerships with industry.

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Here on Connect with Partners, we often highlight how the health care marketplace is working to address rising costs. In last night’s State of the State address (read the full transcript here), Governor Deval Patrick applauded these efforts, declaring, “The market is moving in the right direction and that’s very good news.”

To emphasize this point, the Governor highlighted the reopening of contracts by hospitals and insurers to accept lower rates, evidenced by Partners HealthCare’s new contracts with Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Tufts Health Plan. Today’s Boston Globe provides further evidence supporting the Governor’s stance, as Children’s Hospital Boston and Blue Cross Blue Shield just announced a similar agreement to curb health care costs.

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At a time when health care costs are an increasing concern for patients and their families and are squeezing budgets for cities and towns, it is critical for providers and insurers to work together to find solutions. Partners HealthCare is taking yet another step in that direction, announcing a renegotiation with Tufts Health Plan. By ripping up the last two years of our previous agreement with Tufts, we are able to offer patients across Massachusetts more than $105 million in savings over the next four years. Combined with a similar announcement last fall, total savings to be passed back to consumers stands at $345 million over the next four years.

Beyond the cost savings, however, this program is important because it is an opportunity for Partners HealthCare to pursue our mission of providing high-quality care. As part of the agreement, Partners will enter into Tufts’ Coordinated Care Model (CCM), which means that it will be our responsibility to meet or exceed quality measures while keeping cost-growth lower than the average of the rest of the Tufts Health Plan provider network. Through our partnership with Tufts, we will be able provide coordinated, high-quality care at more affordable rates.

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This morning’s New York Times featured an editorial documenting the slowdown in rising health care costs across the country. By almost any measure, the amount we are spending as a country on health care is falling more in-line with the rest of the economy.

While experts have different views on what is driving this slowdown, the Times editorial drives home one critically important point: “Controlling spending will require reforms that coordinate delivery of services, reduce unnecessary care and spur innovations that improve quality and curb medical costs.”

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