Health Leaders Say Cross-System Collaborations Make Up for Gaps in Access

Lauren Giella

By Lauren Giella

Senior Reporter

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Most health systems share the same goals, but they also share a lot of the same challenges. With labor shortages and rising costs putting a strain on resources and direct-to-consumer tech startups building momentum with patients, hospitals are struggling to keep up with rising patient demand.

On Thursday, January 15, health care leaders joined Newsweek for its latest webinar, “Collaboration Over Competition: Charting a New Path to Better Patient Care.”

The talk, led by Newsweek’s Healthcare Editor Alexis Kayser, focused on the importance of partnership and collaboration between hospitals, tech companies and academic institutions to improve operations and expand access to care.

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The panelists included Hartford HealthCare President and CEO Jeff Flaks, City of Hope President and CEO Robert Stone and Banner Health’s Chief Research Officer Dr. Corey Casper.

At the top of the discussion, Stone said his competition isn’t other health systems; it's diseases like cancer. City of Hope is a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated comprehensive cancer center based in Southern California. It has expanded care to five major regions across the country and serves roughly 175,000 cancer patients annually.

Yet even for its size, Stone said it could not accommodate care for all cancer patients each year without partnership.

“Organizations cannot, or at least should not, keep their knowledge, research and tools to themselves,” he said. “Cancer touches everyone, and it's simply a challenge that's too great and the stakes are too high for any one organization to think that they alone can win the battle.”

He said City of Hope works with tech companies, pharmaceutical companies and philanthropists to scale expertise, reduce variation in care and bring advanced therapies into communities where people live, regardless of their zip code.

Banner Health is based in Phoenix, Arizona, with hospitals and specialized facilities across six western states. In rural areas, Dr. Casper said, health care access and affordability are top challenges for both patients and providers.

Each region across the country has its own politics, culture and resources, making partnerships critical, he said. As a relatively young health system, Banner works with larger, more established hospitals, like the Mayo Clinic, as well as strong academic institutions like the University of Arizona, which provides innovative technology and advanced research capabilities.

“We can now bring in much more innovation and discovery than we can do alone,” Casper said. “And by partnering, we're not just bigger, we're not just sharing a mission, but we're actually filling in pieces of things that we think are integral to being the best, but that we can't do alone.”

All three panelists agreed that finding the right partners requires clear communication, transparency and a strong alignment of core values, missions and cultures that, when combined, build a system that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Staying disciplined around that defined partnership criteria while actively building and evolving a culture drives more action and growth.

“The lesson is finding out not just what your organization's secret sauce is, but what about the secret sauce of the organization you're partnering with,” Stone of City of Hope said. “Look for the similar values, similar experiences and look for the stories.”

As the top health care providers in the U.S., Flaks said health systems must be “obsessed with continuous improvement.”

He said Hartford HealthCare has “an ambition to be the best at getting better,” And every new partnership is an opportunity to improve upon the last one.

Navigating the change required to build and sustain a successful partnership requires a universal understanding of purpose and goals among all internal and external stakeholders, even before the partnership is announced, Banner Health's Dr. Casper said.

“Having those conversations already puts people's minds in that mindset to begin to think about [how] we need to change what we're doing right now,” he said. “Then when you actually announce a partner, it's not a completely novel concept to your team."

Success comes down to transparency, which builds and reinforces trust over time.

Flaks noted that often times, the “why” is more important than the “what.”

"If you focus on the why, people can really get behind and invest in what we're working to accomplish,” he said. “But that does begin with true transparency.”

He added that health care is the ultimate team sport, and as a result, “we're better together.”

“There's so many talented organizations, capable organizations, talented, capable people, so the notion of bringing more people together, aligning them with singular, focused purposes, we'll get to better outcomes,” he said. “There's just no question about it. We've got to figure out ways to align people's incentives, align organizations' incentives and focus people on the greater good together.”

The next Newsweek webinar, “Wearables: What’s The ROI For HealthSystem?” will be on Thursday, January 22, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET. Learn more and register at this link.