5 min 
About the Customer
Community Health Systems (CHS), a four-hospital health system serving California’s Central Valley
Problem
Lacked benchmarking data to confidently assess MSSP participation and risk
Outcome
Data-backed insights accelerated MSSP entry and risk-based contracting
Building a sustainable future for a safety-net health system
Community Health Systems (CHS), a four-hospital health system serving California’s Central Valley, faces challenges that are increasingly common among safety-net providers: a predominantly government-funded payer mix, rising healthcare costs, and growing pressure to improve outcomes while maintaining financial sustainability.
With approximately 82% of its payer mix tied to government programs—including a large Medicaid population—CHS recognized that traditional fee-for-service reimbursement would not support its long-term mission. As the region’s primary trauma center and largest healthcare provider, CHS needed a strategy that would both strengthen care delivery and ensure organizational sustainability.
For Lee Huskins, Senior Vice President of Population Health and Value-Based Care, the question was clear – how can a safety-net health system confidently transition into value-based care while building the infrastructure necessary to succeed?
CHS knew the transition would require more than new contracts. It would require new analytics capabilities, population health workflows, and a deeper understanding of where the organization could successfully assume risk.
Community Health Systems
Community Regional Medical Center • Fresno, CA
4
hospital regional system in Fresno, California
2,500
Affiliated Providers
$291M
community benefit
A strategic partnership to guide value-based care decisions
CHS partnered with Arcadia to gain access to Medicare benchmarking data, provider performance insights, market intelligence, and MSSP opportunity analysis through CareJourney’s data and Arcadia’s broader analytics platform.
Before engaging Arcadia, CHS was missing the proactive analytics necessary to evaluate government value-based opportunities. While internal teams could produce operational reports, they did not have access to the external benchmarking data needed to model performance under alternative payment arrangements or assess market opportunities. Arcadia provided a faster path forward.
Using Medicare data and provider comparison capabilities, CHS was able to:
- Evaluate multiple value-based program options
- Assess MSSP participation opportunities
- Analyze beneficiary attribution and network adequacy
- Better understand chronic disease prevalence in the market
- Support strategic planning for Medicare and Medicaid populations
- Build confidence in projected financial and operational outcomes before assuming risk
Turning strategy into action
CHS’s original value-based care roadmap envisioned a gradual five-to-seven-year transition. However, changing reimbursement dynamics and increasing financial pressure accelerated the timeline. Leadership needed evidence-based guidance to determine where to begin.
Arcadia’s benchmarking and MSSP analytics helped CHS move beyond intuition and develop a data-informed strategy. By evaluating beneficiary populations, utilization patterns, and performance trends, CHS gained confidence that MSSP Track A was the right place to begin its Medicare value-based care journey.
The analysis provided leadership with a clearer understanding of potential shared savings opportunities, provider network adequacy, growth requirements for future risk-bearing arrangements, and infrastructure investments necessary for long-term success.
The data transformed strategic planning from educated guesswork into a structured decision-making process. Said Huskins, “The tool was able to give us enough confidence that we could actually make an impact. We felt even while we are at the beginning of our value-based transition… the data we were able to utilize from Arcadia illustrated a positive impact to our bottom line was very realistic, which would then give us the funding necessary dollars to continue to invest in our care infrastructure.”
One unexpected advantage for CHS was immediate access to actionable insights through CareJourney while broader Arcadia implementation efforts were underway. Rather than waiting months for data integrations and platform deployment, CHS leaders were able to begin evaluating opportunities almost immediately.
This early access helped maintain organizational momentum and enabled leadership teams to begin making strategic decisions before full implementation was complete.
Huskins noted, “We were able to get to market. Arcadia gave us usability right away and allowed us to actually be productive without having all the connectors and everything else in place.”
Why Arcadia over native EHR analytics
As an Epic customer, CHS initially explored whether existing EHR analytics capabilities could support its value-based care strategy.
Leadership concluded that while Epic provided strong transactional and operational reporting, it lacked the specialized population health analytics, benchmarking, and value-based care insights needed to support strategic decision-making.
In contrast, Arcadia offered:
- Purpose-built value-based care analytics
- External benchmarking and Medicare insights
- Faster deployment of population health intelligence
- Flexible querying and custom analysis capabilities
- Expertise from teams focused specifically on risk-based care and performance improvement
This combination enabled CHS to accelerate planning while avoiding the significant time and resource investment required to build comparable capabilities internally.
“We were able to get to market. Arcadia gave us usability right away and allowed us to actually be productive without having all the connectors and everything else in place.”
Lessons Learned
1. Value-Based Care requires more than contracts
Success depends on building the operational, clinical, and analytics infrastructure necessary to manage populations proactively.
2. External data accelerates strategic decisions
Third-party benchmarking helps organizations evaluate opportunities with greater confidence than internal data alone.
3. Speed matters
Immediate access to actionable insights can maintain organizational momentum while larger transformation efforts are underway.
4. Strong partnerships matter as much as technology
For CHS, Arcadia’s collaborative approach and expertise were as valuable as the platform itself, helping leadership navigate complex decisions during a critical period of transformation.
“I’ve never felt like it’s a vendor relationship. I’ve always felt like if I call Arcadia, my problem is their problem.”
Lee Huskins
Senior Vice President of Population Health and Value-Based Care, Community Health Systems
