Perspectives for workforce effectiveness: Strategic partnerships can help solve issues from labor shortages to supply chain setbacks

Health systems are facing serious challenges, including reduced reimbursement, supply chain delays, and a shortage of healthcare professionals. Strategic partnerships can help provide essential support to navigate these issues.

You may already utilize external labs, but are you extracting as much value as possible? Issues raised by participants in a recent workshop at Becker’s 10th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable speak to the need:

•  “We’re barely able to keep up with our infrastructure and facilities, let alone staffing.” 
• “We’re struggling against a tide that many health systems and hospitals will not survive.”
•  “Alternative sites of care and businesses to build a healthy ecosystem is one of the most critical things.”

One way to help solve these issues is to evolve from vendor contracts to strategic partnerships. Vendors care about short-term goals identified in their contracts. Strategic partnerships, on the other hand, focus on collaboration, shared business objectives, and problem-solving. Working with like-minded organizations in it for the long haul, you can start to find valuable solutions for workforce shortages, increased patient acuity, and declining revenues. In our work with PeaceHealth, for example, we identified a lack of consistency across their many in-house labs and collaborated to standardize their processes. In the end, we drove out about 20% of the cost.

Collaboration optimizes operations—and care

While you may be uncomfortable (at best!) inviting someone to deconstruct your process, the results speak for themselves. Opening yourself up to a long-term strategic relationship with a well-respected, national reference lab will create opportunities that can start to turn the tide that may feel so threatening today.