In rural Oshkosh, Wisconsin, they just call it “collaboration” between health care giants:
But that doesn’t mean there’s no place for collaboration among competing entities. ThedaCare and the other two healthcare biggies in Oshkosh – Affinity and Aurora – have found several ways to join forces to strengthen everybody’s bottom line.
Whether it’s Aurora and Affinity combining their cardiology departments to ensure top level care for patients of both hospitals, or ThedaCare, Affinity, Aurora and others working together at the Living Healthy Community Clinic at 510 Doctors Court in Oshkosh to provide medical care for the poor, these collaborations make sense.
‘We just realized both our organizations expect to take good care of people. We’d identified gaps in services. That’s how the cardiology cooperation came about between Mercy and Aurora,” said Bill Calhoun, president of Mercy Medical Center.
“We questioned why do we compete when cardiologists are hard to find? We decided to do this on behalf of patients. At the end of the day it makes sense,” Calhoun said.
It will be interesting to see how long these cardiologists continue to “collaborate” before either limiting their practice or burning out and moving to new pastures.
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Despite what the corporate spin might be, “gaps in service” still need people to provide quality service. Spread ’em too thin and you’ll still have “gaps in service.”
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Westby G. Fisher, MD, FACC is a board certified internist, cardiologist, and cardiac electrophysiologist (doctor specializing in heart rhythm disorders) practicing at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, IL, USA and is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine. He entered the blog-o-sphere in November, 2005. He writes regularly at Dr. Wes. DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this blog are strictly the those of the author(s) and should not be construed as the opinion(s) or policy(ies) of NorthShore University HealthSystem, nor recommendations for your care or anyone else's. Please seek professional guidance instead.
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