This weekend, President Obama traveled to Grand Junction, CO to promote health reform. As we've mentioned before, both on this blog and in our recent paper, Grand Junction, Colorado: A Health Community That Works, Grand Junction spends less but delivers higher quality care than most other U.S. communities.

As New America's Len Nichols told The Los Angeles Times, Grand Junction is "a great example for the nation...They have managed to contain the natural impulses of excessive competition and the medical arms race...Everybody's looking into this."

The health community in Grand Junction is well-coordinated and pursues many strategies to deliver patients high quality care while keeping costs down. Politics Daily provides a good run-down, but here are some highlights:

• Universal prenatal care through the B4 Babies and Beyond Program allowed Grand Junction to keep pregnant mothers (and their babies) healthier and reduce costs.
• Online medical records databank -- Health IT in practice. Doctors in Grand Junction can, for example, instantly access a patient's medical records when they are admitted to the ER. This cuts down on repetitive tests, and informs doctors about the potential for adverse drug interactions or allergic reactions.
• A financial reimbursement system that rewards doctors equally for seeing patients, rich or poor. Grand Junctions' doctors and providers have collaborated continually, sharing notes on patient care, and standardizing prices to reduce the temptation to cherry-pick patients.
• Low-cost community clinic. St. Mary's Hospital & Regional Medical Center, Grand Junction's largest hospital, and the Marillac Clinic work together to coordinate patient care. For example, uninsured patients can seek care at the Marillac Clinic and pay on a sliding scale, rather than go to the hospital ER for expensive care that is not geared toward accommodating a patient's routine health needs.

For more information, please see our series of posts on Grand Junction, part I and part II.