Community Hospitals Create Affiliation Agreements with Prestigious, Brand-Name Hospitals

An interesting new concept is arising among community hospitals whereby they are affiliating with prestigious, often distant health systems like Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic. This phenomenon should be distinguished from the actual purchase of smaller hospitals or the opening of new hospitals by, say, Cleveland Clinic. The latter system is extremely large by any standard with 52,082 employees; it includes a main campus in Cleveland and 11 regional hospitals (see:Cleveland Clinic by the Numbers). A recent article discussed the aforementioned affiliation trend (see:Community Hospitals Link Arms With Prestigious Facilities To Raise Their Profiles)Leah Binder, president and chief executive of the Leapfrog Group, a Washington-based patient safety organization that grades hospitals based on data involving medical errors and best practices, cautions that affiliation with a famous name is not a guarantee of quality.“Brand names don’t always signify the highest quality of care,” she said. “And hospitals are really complicated places.” Affiliation agreements are “essentially benefit by association,” said Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Sch ool of Public Health.“In some cases it’s purely branding and in other cases it’s a deep association.”A key question is “how often does the community hospital interact with the flagship hospital? If it’s once a week, that’s one thing. If it’s almos...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Innovations Medical Consumerism Quality of Care Source Type: blogs