Health System Perspectives

The need for physician involvement.
Most health systems’ key initiatives depend on the involvement of its physician groups (both employed and independent). As the tool below illustrates, few steps in the journey toward population health management and health system sustainability can be made without direct physician involvement.

Tool: Physician Involvement in Key Health System Priorities

Different needs for different types of health system.
Physician strategies can vary depending on the characteristics of the health system. For example, the issues of an academic medical center involve a balancing of teaching, research and clinical responsibilities. Academic medical centers often have a need to solidify and bring closer their primary care referral base.

Aligned integrated systems, on the other hand, may have already carefully balanced primary care and specialists, but they may have difficulty expanding or accommodating other physician models.

Common differences between different types of health systems include:

As more health systems consolidate, their physician issues will be a hybrid of the cohort examples shown above.