Southcentral Foundation's Nuka System of Care: exporting Alaska's success in healthcare delivery.

• Author: Slaten, Russ
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Alaska Native Corporations

Healthcare providers from the nation's most respectable organizations and from around the world continually make time to visit [Alaska to observe and learn the operational and medical practices of Southcentral Foundation.

Southcentral Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in Anchorage under the tribal authority of Cook Inlet Region, Inc., or CIRI, and managed and owned by Alaska Native people. Southcentral Foundation has more than 1,750 employees and sixty-five programs and serves Alaska Native and American Indian people in the Anchorage Service Unit. Primary care services are offered at the Anchorage Native Primary Care Center--part of the Alaska Native Medical Center on the Alaska Native Health Campus--and the Benteh Nuutah Valley Native Primary Care Center, which opened in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley in 2012. Additionally, Southcentral Foundation manages healthcare services at three community health centers: McGrath Regional Health Center, Nilavena Subregional Clinic, and the C'eyiits' Hwnax Life House Community Health Center in Sutton.

The foundation's Nuka System of Care, a best practices model for healthcare delivery, has received national and international recognition for its successes in health outcomes, operational efficiencies, and customer and employee satisfaction.

In its fourth year of the Nuka System of Care Conference, healthcare professionals from Scotland, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, and all over the United States visited Anchorage in June to learn from Southcentral Foundation.

"The old model is disease-focused. Patients come in, and we diagnose the disease and treat it. At Southcentral Foundation the model is thinking about the customer-owner within the context of their home and community, getting to know them in a way that is based on a deep relationship, and then working to promote wellness through prevention, facilitating changes to health behaviors, and diagnosing and treating illness when it occurs," says Dr. Russell Phillips, Director of the Harvard Center for Primary Care.

Top Honors

Southcentral Foundation saw one of its highest honors for its Nuka System of Care as a 2011 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award from the US Department of Commerce. Seen as the nation's highest Presidential honor for organizational performance excellence and innovation, the award brought to light Southcentral Foundation's ability to increase revenue while cutting costs. According to the Medical Group...