The head of Montana's largest hospital joined health executives from across the nation Thursday to launch a new group that says it will push for significant health-care reforms.

Nicholas Wolter, a physician and chief executive officer of Billings Clinic, said the group represents industry heads who aren't afraid to promote reforms that may change how they do business, rather than protect the status quo.

"There are health-care leaders who believe significant change really is needed, and that doesn't mean somebody else's change, but change that affects us as well," he said in a phone interview from Washington, D.C.

Wolter was at the National Press Club in Washington Thursday for the launch of Health CEOs for Health Reform.

The group hopes to meet soon and start forming specific ideas on insurance, payment and "delivery system" reforms, among other things, and eventually present ideas to Congress and the incoming Obama administration, he said.

"Universal (health) access is the goal, but if we do not accompany universal access with delivery-system reform and reform in other areas, we really won't be successful," Wolter said.

"Delivery-system reform" means changing how physicians and other health care providers might coordinate care for complex illnesses, so the care is less fragmented among different doctors and facilities.

Joining Wolter at Thursday's event were executives from several major hospitals or medical centers, health insurer Blue Shield of California and Merck & Co., a major drug manufacturer.

Also participating in the group is the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy institute. The Foundation, headquartered in Washington, D.C., says its goal is to bring "new voices and new ideas to the fore of our nation's public discourse."

Its board of directors includes former Clinton administration officials, the chairman of Google Inc., foreign policy experts, and national journalists.

Wolter said Health CEOs for Health Reform grew out of discussions among people familiar with the health-reform efforts of the Clinton administration in 1994, and who wanted to look at why that effort failed and what could be done differently.

A press release on the group said it's based on three principles: That health-care reform is an urgent priority and can't be postponed; that meaningful reform means making care more affordable and changing its delivery; and that health-care stakeholders must be willing to change their business model in order to better serve everyone.

Wolter said he's been intrigued by the approach so far, and wanted to be involved.

"You never know on these things, when you jump into them, where they might go," he said. "But we hope it will be a voice (for real reform)."