Center for Healthcare Governance Monographs 2005
 NEW!- Exploring Hospital-Physician Business Relationships: What Trustees Need to Know
About the Author:
John H. (Hank) Duffy is President of JHD Group. Founded in 1988 and based in Addison, TX, the JHD Group is an organization dedicated to helping large physician organizations improve market position, operations and financial results.
Preface:
Effective and productive hospital/physician relationships are essential to continuing to improve patient care quality, service and clinical outcomes.While hospitals and physicians are employing a variety of strategies to redefine and strengthen how they work together to achieve these goals, (see “The Hospital-Physician Relationship: Redefining the Rules of Engagement”, Trustee Workbook, February 2005) the business and economic ties between both parties remain a crucial part of the relationship. Understanding how to successfully engage in market-based collaboration is a critical cornerstone of effective hospital/physician relationships and can lead to productive relations on quality, safety and care of patients. Building an environment for successful collaboration in all these areas starts with the board.
This publication briefly reviews the history of how hospitals and physicians have worked together and the key events leading to the need for greater collaboration in today’s resource constrained and increasingly competitive health care environment. It discusses the key role of the health care organization governing board in working with physicians to frame the value exchange between both parties in the context of the organization’s mission, goals and market position. It also encourages boards to guide their organizations in moving beyond transactional relationships, engaging physicians across a spectrum of collaborations and building an infrastructure to enable such collaborations. This publication also reviews several specific opportunities for hospital/physician collaboration and outlines the enabling infrastructure necessary to accomplish them.
Boards, health care organization executives and clinician leaders can use this publication in a variety of ways, for example, as a background resource for board meeting educational sessions or as advance reading for a board retreat. It also can be used as a reference to help guide board or board committee discussion on setting overall hospital policy regarding hospital/physician collaborations or in evaluating proposals for specific collaboration opportunities. As author John H. (Hank) Duffy concludes, while it is difficult to make predictions in a tumultuous environment,“It is, however, safe to say that…the more hospitals and physicians are able to successfully collaborate, the greater the probability that they will be more successful on a good day and suffer less pain on a bad one.”
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