Transforming the provider partnership: Begin with culture

Building effective partnerships between health care organizations and the provider community is crucial for improving health care quality, outcomes, and value. These relationships can be difficult to navigate at times, especially in the current, post-pandemic landscape. Now more than ever, leaders in health care must prioritize efforts to build strong, effective relationships with providers.

Effective partnering between the provider community and health system leadership is necessary to ensure that patients receive the right care at the right time and in the right setting. Provider, leadership alignment can improve the quality of care, reduce costs, and enhance patient satisfaction.

Building partnerships with providers also aids provider engagement.

By maintaining a collaborative relationship, providers are more likely to feel valued and respected. Improved provider engagement often translates to reduced burnout and increased job satisfaction which took a major hit amidst the pandemic.

1. Improve care coordination: Effective collaboration between providers across the continuum of care results in improved care coordination and communication, ensuring that patients receive appropriate care across multiple settings.
2. Identify areas for improvement and cost savings: Providers have unique insights into the health care system and can offer valuable feedback on areas for improvement. By including them meaningfully in planning, health care organizations can increase effectiveness in identifying ways to reduce costs, such as streamlining administrative processes, optimizing supply chains, and other areas for improvement.

Today’s health care landscape is ruled by continuous transformation — the Provider Partnership is no exception. To propel the provider partnership transformation, health system leadership must begin with establishing a culture that supports continuous change and transformation – what we call a “change-ready” culture. These change-ready cultures that are well positioned to respond and support continuous health care transformation are intentionally designed with a few common characteristics:

1. They cultivate courage.
2. There is alignment among leaders and between multidisciplinary teams.
3. They emphasize and evolve with customer needs and values.

Once your organization has prioritized the provider partnership and change-ready culture transformation, there are five best practices to consider that will support your efforts:

1. Establish a shared vision and clear goals: When transforming partnerships with providers, it is essential to establish a shared vision and clear goals for care quality, outcomes, and value. This will result in everyone working toward the same goals and provides a framework for measuring success.
2. Communicate effectively and foster trust: Effective communication is fundamental to transforming your partnerships. Communication should be frequent and transparent. Leaders should seek out input and encourage all team members to share feedback and ideas. Open communication strategies such as regular meetings, forums, or online information-sharing platforms can help foster trust and increase levels of collaboration.
3. Use data to drive decision making: Data can be a powerful tool for driving decision-making and improving outcomes. Health care organizations should collaborate with providers to gather and analyze data to inform quality improvement initiatives, and capitalize on the collaborative, continuous, and cost-saving promises of operational digital dexterity.
4. Invest in Building Capability: Health care organizations should provide providers with the support and resources they need to succeed. This can include access to training, technology, and other resources to improve patient care.
5. Recognize and reward success: Recognizing and rewarding success can help to build momentum and foster a culture of collaboration. Health care organizations should celebrate successes and recognize the contributions of providers when it comes to achieving shared goals.

The recommendation to prioritize building strong provider relationships is one solidly backed by data. These statistics (among many others) demonstrate the positive impact of partnerships with provider communities on health care outcomes:

1. According to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine in 2021, health care organizations that implemented team-based care and engaged in partnerships with primary care providers were associated with improved quality of care and patient outcomes.
2. Another study published in the Journal of Healthcare Management in 2020 found that partnerships between hospitals and post-acute care providers led to reduced readmissions and improved patient outcomes.
3. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has also reported positive outcomes from partnerships with providers. In 2020, CMS reported that accountable care organizations (ACOs) participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) generated over $1.9 billion in total net savings to Medicare and improved quality measures.

Read more: The future of employer-sponsored health care

The past few years have posed unprecedented challenges to the entire health care industry. As the industry and organizational cultures evolve, it creates a space for growth in the form of new thoughts, innovative ideas, and even new people. When health care organizations and providers are aligned, they can use that space in ways that propel transformation. They can leverage their alignment to bring intention to evolving culture over time. Transforming the provider partnership, through culture, will maximize the benefits of strong provider partnerships currently recognized.

Kia Mclain, North Highlands