Choose your friends wisely

With evidence growing that health outcomes are impacted by a wide spectrum of social determinants¹ — not the least being housing, education, poverty and nutrition — the need for healthcare organizations to partner with groups that contribute to people’s lives and not solely to patients’ clinical outcomes is more apparent. Healthcare providers must look to adjacent sectors not only for their contributions to people’s health and wellness, but also as capabilities to be leveraged as they focus on their core competencies.

“You have to be able to build trust and alliances across a great number of partners,” says Sarah Downey, president and CEO of Michael Garron Hospital in Canada. “To do that, you need to be strong listeners, communicators and be humble. You have to speak to an interest greater than your own and your organization’s.”

In fact, partnerships aren’t seen as a signal of deferring responsibility, but as a way to bolster a brand. Mayo Clinic sees partnerships as key to international expansion.

Data from the 2021 Healthcare CEO Future Pulse reveals that many CEOs (62 percent) are aware of the value of partnerships, and that—now or within the next two years— they are planning to forge robust buy/build partnerships to minimize capability gaps, mitigate risks and reduce costs. For an industry that has often operated with a lot of pride and self-sufficiency, it is refreshing to see that health leaders are open to asking for help.

So, who exactly are these partners? Who is the competition? Who doesn’t matter (yet)? CEOs are trending towards engaging telecommunications companies (52 percent), health technology (software and hardware) providers (60 percent) and insurance companies: (84 percent) to be partners in care delivery. The latter is a little surprising: Insurance companies are part-and-parcel of healthcare in most jurisdictions, but mostly as payers, and not necessarily as partners. Increased cooperation with telecom and tech may suggest that CEOs are seeking to mitigate technological risks, with tech companies as producers of digital solutions and hardware and telecoms providing the infrastructure to enable the flow of data between sites, devices, and nodes. Healthcare leaders may be looking to their particular expertise given that 65 percent believe that their ability to manage technological change threatens their organizational ability to evolve.

Despite “big retail” increasingly making moves into the healthcare sector², retailers are considered partners by just one-third of executives (33 percent) while another third (34 percent) haven’t even put this sector on their radar screens. But the influence of retail – in particular retail pharmacy in many jurisdictions was made more evident when these organizations took on responsibility for COVID-19 testing and vaccine administration. These organizations have strong community-based infrastructure and capacity that can take on responsibilities that allow health providers to focus on higher-value activities. These partnerships may also foster greater customer-centric systems, given their sector’s leadership in living that ethos.

Perhaps most surprising is the attitude towards human and social services organizations: those that work to provide housing, employment support and other services that influence people’s lives and environmental situations. Nearly one-third (30 percent) of healthcare CEOs described human and social services providers as their competitors. Not surprisingly, this opinion was held most strongly by those who describe their organization’s transformation persona as late majority or laggard. While they have a common outcome (the wellbeing of people) – separate budgets and responsibilities suggests a misalignment of accountabilities and cooperation.