NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Southcoast Health announced today that it has joined the Massachusetts Value Alliance (MVA) formed by Emerson Hospital in Concord, South Shore Medical Center in South Weymouth and Sturdy Memorial Hospital in Attleboro.

The MVA shares best practices to help drive down costs and improve care, and provide data and analysis to support those improvements.

“Southcoast Health sees this as a great opportunity to work with other community health systems to share some of the initiatives and best practices that we all have established,” said Linda Bodenmann, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Southcoast Health.

The alliance is modeled after the highly successful Value Care Alliance in Connecticut, where independent hospitals and physicians groups align to improve efficiencies and promote local governance.

The MVA allows the health systems to collectively negotiate contracts for purchased services such as elevator and general equipment maintenance, food service and environmental services. It also allows for collective negotiating for third party administrator (TPA) and stop-loss insurance for self-insured health plans, and pharmacy benefit management (PBM).