ABSTRACT
United States academic medical centers (AMCs) have upheld their long-standing reputation for excellence by teaching and training the next generation of physicians, supporting medical research, providing world-class medical care, and offering breakthrough treatments for highly complex medical cases. In recent years, the pace and direction of change reshaping the American health care industry has created a set of new and profound challenges that AMC leaders must address in order to sustain their institutions. University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) is an alliance of 116 leading nonprofit academic medical centers and 276 of their affiliated hospitals, all of which are focused on delivering world-class patient care. Formed in 1984, UHC fosters collaboration with and among its members through its renowned programs and services in the areas of comparative data and analytics, performance improvement, supply chain management, strategic research, and public policy. Each year, UHC surveys the executives of its member institutions to understand the issues they view as most critical to sustaining the viability and success of their organizations. The results of UHC's most recent 2011 member survey, coupled with a 2012 Strategic Health Perspectives Harris Interactive presentation, based in parton surveys of major health care industry stakeholders reveal the most important and relevant issues and opportunities that hospital leaders face today, as the United States health care delivery system undergoes a period of unprecedented transformation.
Subject(s)
Academic Medical Centers , Cooperative Behavior , Health Care Reform , Total Quality Management/organization & administration , Academic Medical Centers/organization & administration , Academic Medical Centers/standards , Data Collection , Education, Medical , Health Care Reform/legislation & jurisprudence , Organizations, Nonprofit , Quality of Health Care , United StatesABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Debates continue regarding optimal structures for governance and administration between medical schools and their teaching hospitals. METHODS: Structural integration (SI) for 85 academic health centers was characterized as high (single leader or fiduciary) or low (multiple leaders or fiduciaries). Functional alignment (FA) was estimated from questionnaire responses by teaching hospitals' chief executive officers, and an index was calculated quantifying organizational collaboration across several functional areas. SI and FA were examined for their association with global performance measures in teaching, research, clinical care, finance, and efficiency. RESULTS: AHCs with high SI had significantly higher FA, though overlap between high-SI and low-SI institutions was considerable. SI was not significantly associated with any performance measure. In contrast, FA was significantly associated with higher performance in teaching, research, and finance but not clinical care and efficiency. CONCLUSIONS: FA between medical schools and their primary teaching hospitals more strongly predicts academic health centers' performance than does SI. As demands for greater collaboration increase under health reform, emphasis should be placed on increasing FA rather than SI.
