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Chrysler Corporation to Tackle Health Care Quality

19 May 1998

Chrysler Corporation to Tackle Health Care Quality And Cost With Health Care Providers

    AUBURN HILLS, Mich., May 18 -- In a step to improve quality
and eliminate waste in the American health care system, Chrysler Corporation
has invited its health care providers to examine the current state
of health care services.
    "The entire country is very concerned with issues relating to health
care," said Kathy Oswald, Vice President of Human Resources.  "As an employer
that values its workforce of almost 200,000 employees, retirees and their
families, we're listening to their concerns and are attempting to address some
of the current dynamics in the health care system."
    Chrysler's health care providers are being asked to participate more fully
in the Corporation's Extended Enterprise(TM), philosophy of supplier
relations.  This constructive approach to supply chain management allows
Chrysler to work with suppliers as teammates to discover new ways to be more
efficient, increase quality and mutually achieve cost reductions.
    Chrysler's Human Resources Staff has already achieved a productive
relationship with several of its health care suppliers, through the Kokomo,
Ind. "Health Care Initiative" and with Mercy Health Care System.
    Initiated in early 1996, The International United Auto Workers (UAW),
Chrysler and General Motors have partnered to address health care quality and
cost concerns in Kokomo, where Chrysler has three manufacturing facilities.
Some early results of the Kokomo Initiative include an 8 percent reduction in
medical cost per employee.
    Earlier this month, Chrysler assisted St. Joseph-Mercy in a process
redesign of their Emergency Room admitting practices at the Macomb facility.
A positive result of the collaboration, St. Joseph's has reduced the turn-
around-time for a typical emergency visit from four hours to one.
    "As health care costs continue to increase at an alarming rate, the
Company, as a major buyer of health care services, must begin to address waste
and cost in the system, or we are being fiscally irresponsible," said Oswald.
"We are asking our suppliers to recognize that they are experts in their
respective businesses, and to think of what we can do as partners to
collectively improve health care for all employees."