Saratoga And Glens Falls Hospitals Will Study Potential Partnerships

By LUCAS WILLARD

Two hospitals in the Southern Adirondack region have begun discussions to examine possible opportunities for collaboration and cooperation. 

Recently, the Saratoga Hospital Board of Trustees and Glens Falls Hospital Board of Governors agreed to begin to formally look for ways for possible future “alignment and collaboration.”

The two healthcare providers already cooperate in certain areas, including some medical specialties and comprehensive cancer care.

Angelo Calbone, president and CEO of Saratoga Hospital, said part of what’s driving the decision to pursue more options for collaborations are the changes in the way healthcare is delivered as seen on a statewide and national level.

“You know, less inpatinent-centered, the economics of healthcare of shrinking core hospital utilization, and squeezing payment rates.”

Calbone said it made sense for Saratoga Hospital, with 171 beds, to look to its neighbor in Glens Falls.

“We’re not starting with programmatic or specific ideas, it’s more about understanding our communities’ organizations, where are strengthens, where we see our collective futures, and try to develop a relationship and understanding of what we think the best future for both of us may be, then move to specific discussions,” said Calbone.

Dianne Shugrue, president and CEO of Glens Falls Hospital, said that after her organization experienced a more financially difficult 2013, the hospital is looking to the future.

“I’m happy to say that we’ve emerged in 2014 with a very strong operating plan coming to fruition having just posted our fourth consecutive operating game in a row as we finish up our financials for April,” said Shugrue

Over the past year, in addition to hiring new leadership positions within the organization, Glens Falls Hospital has made connections within the Adirondack region by joining the Adirondack Health Insitute, and the formation of Adirondacks ACO, or accountable care organization.

Glens Falls Hospital has 2600 employees and 27 health service locations, and is the largest employer in its region. As it looks for new ways to collaborate and improve, Shugrue said the company and Saratoga Hospital are now at the “beginning of an exploration.”

“They are challenged with the same challenges we are, in terms of the changing healthcare arena,” said Shugrue. “Both of us believe that it is important to our communities that we maintain a local presence for healthcare. We are community hospitals and that’s our mission.”

Discussions will take place throughout the year, and will involve administrators and physicians, as well as community stakeholders in the Glens Falls and Saratoga regions.

In 2013, Saratoga Hospital also opened its Emergent Care Center located off Exit 12 in Malta, a collaboration with Albany Medical Center.

http://wamc.org/post/saratoga-and-glens-falls-hospitals-will-study-potential-partnerships

How the NHS can build partnerships with other organisations

• Successful partnerships can offer benefits to both the public and private sectors
  Matthew Harker
• Guardian Professional, Thursday 18 July 2013 03.30 EDT
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Meeting the challenge: commissioning support units are being encouraged to build partnerships with other organisations. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Getty Images

Many NHS staff have already been looking beyond business-as-usual, to really get to grips with the challenge of major clinical service change.

There is no silver bullet. Health services will continue to experience increasing demands, both demographically and societally driven. Against this backdrop, the challenges of maintaining and improving quality standards and improving things for patients, at the same time as reducing spend, have been brought into sharp relief by recent events in Staffordshire and elsewhere.

But how does the NHS affect the cultural and practical changes to patient behaviours? How do they achieve the investment in technology and other resources? How, without surrendering control of the clinical decision-making agenda, do they seek the funding and additional, commercial and other skills that they require?

To meet this challenge, commissioning support units (CSUs) are being encouraged to start building partnerships with other NHS, commercial and third-sector organisations, who can bring fresh thinking and wider expertise to the NHS.

For clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) as customers, dealing with a CSU-led commissioning support partnership may also help to simplify contractual arrangements. CCGs will also be looking for ways to better align the incentives of commissioning support organisations with their own successful delivery of the quality, innovation, productivity and prevention (QIPP) agenda. A broader CSU partnership, where there is greater ability to invest, manage risk and explore outcomes-based risk and reward contracts may be the way to move towards this.

Between 2008 and 2011, my team partnered with NHS Ashton Leigh and Wigan to deliver Transforming Commissioning Saving Lives, one of the first large-scale commissioning transformation programmes under the national framework. Ashton Leigh and Wigan undertook the programme in response to a number of challenges; mounting financial pressure to reduce acute activity, poor health outcomes (compared with national benchmarks), and commissioners struggling to gain control in a health economy dominated by the local hospital trust.

Working together, we devised and implemented a number of strategies to improve commissioning of clinical care services, to both enhance performance and achieve savings. We undertook organisational development and leadership coaching – working with the chief executive and his team and in joint programmes with the local authority.

We worked closely with commissioning managers, clinical commissioners, patients, doctors, nurses and health systems partners to redesign local stroke services, commissioning a pathway to diagnose and manage patients following a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or mini stroke, and to provide holistic and person-centered health and social rehabilitation for people who have had a full stroke.

This resulted in a reduced average length of time a patient spends in hospital – from 56 days to 12 days. It achieved £14.39m worth of savings. But it also achieved more long-term, fundamental changes through the skills and knowledge transferred.

My experience leads me to believe successful partnerships can offer significant benefits to both the public sector service delivery organisation (for example, a local authority or, in this case, a CSU) and the private or third sector partner. They offer greater resilience in terms of both capacity and capability.

Partnerships also mean that risks can be shared and that investment can be attracted from partners who are more able to fund new technology and other resources. And lessons can be learnt from the experience of other parts of the private and public sector about innovative ways to get service users and their families engaged, and providers of healthcare services doing things differently.

Matthew Harker is director of healthcare consulting at Capita.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. Join the Healthcare Professionals Network to receive regular emails and exclusive offers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network/2013/jul/18/nhs-build-partnerships-commercial-third-sector-organisations