The 1990s called — They want your hospital's operating model back

Operating models — the organizational structure, processes and performance management underlying patient care — based on hospital centric-services and fee-for-performance payment "won't work anymore," said Chris Smedley, vice president of physician enterprise at Premier Inc., a healthcare improvement company networking with more than 3,900 U.S. hospitals and more than 150,000 other provider organizations.

Health systems are made up of several departments, spanning acute and ambulatory care, each of which has its own span of control, management team and staff members who fulfill specialized roles. This siloed operating model too often results in fragmented care because the care team is designed in a way where no one feels a sense of responsibility for the entire patient experience. More tangibly, the broken operating model often results in patients left to fend for themselves, navigating the complex care processes, and missed opportunities for health interventions — all of which drag down a hospital's bottom line.

Instead, survival in today's healthcare ecosystem requires...

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