- What are some of the things you would do to attract new patients and create interest in others considering the alliance to follow with your direction?
Building and maintaining strong patient-centered services and differentiated service brand that will identify the alliance. Solidifying and leveraging physician relationships to patient services. Increasing and finding ways to provide customer engagement, responsiveness and loyalty is important.
- What internal costs would you consider cutting or merging with others if you did form an alliance or ACO?
A source of difficulties in health care costing including internal costing is the absence of professional consensus on some data and methods issues. At a general level, there is a universal agreement that the cost of any health care activity, including successful alliance should be defined in terms of the “economic opportunity costs” of the component resources, with each resource valued in its next best use. The use of cost- effective technologies to provide medical services; and the possible reduction of excess medical cost of services, such as unnecessary bonus pay for other employees and the use of only outsource services necessary to carryout procedures.
- How would you study rate of return (or would you) to determine the efficacy of certain services offered in the health integration?
Feedback effect is very vital during and after the incorporation. If efficacy of the medical service(s) is established, an intervention is likely to be at least as good as other available interventions, to which it will have been compared. Self-efficacy is important in providing best practices before and after the integration. For example, the concept of ‘self-efficacy’ is an important one in the self-management of chronic diseases because doctors and patients often do not follow best practice in using a treatment. The new look-and-feel of the brand should be modern and powerful, and it should clearly portray the overall service model of the two, as the industry (local) leader.
- What about social and political challenges? Social and political challenges certainly exist in any integrative system.
With the new and different staffs and physicians working together, challenges do occur. For example, politically, the ability to retain current or increase other job positions is a challenge that no one knows (like job placement for the already existing higher paying employees to retain or withdraw). If care is not taken, the political and social challenges may lead the under-degradement of their products and services.
- What strengths could each facility bring to the table when discussing integration? Certainly both sides of the isles should and will be able to bring on the table the existing services offer. Secondly, they will be able to work together and provide more services with reasonable prices only if constructive plans are in place. Being able to serve more people with the same world-class of service is also significant. Improving patient experiences because of the more effectiveness of the services provided. Lastly, innovating for a long term success is the key to any strategic alliances
