While many hospitals are concerned with their competition, collaborating with neighboring systems may be a win-win strategy, bringing better clinical outcomes to patients, according to a March 16 Harvard Business Review report.
In the late 1990s, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan launched a collaborative program that brought together more than 50 Michigan hospitals to tackle cardiovascular disease. Without fear of competition, hospitals opened their notes with each other, sharing tips on their successes, for instance low post-surgical infection rates or high performing tobacco cessation programs. The collaboration ended up lowering costs, reducing hospitalizations and improving quality of care.
That initiative was the first of many collaborative quality initiatives across the state, which in total saved up to $1.4 billion in healthcare costs.
These sorts of collaborations allow hospitals to place their performance in context and compare themselves to other systems, thereby identifying weakness and opportunities for improvement in their own systems. Collaboration then may provide opportunities for systems to better themselves in all aspects.
Read the full report here.