Two leading health systems—WellSpan Health and Baylor Scott & White Health—exemplify the principles of an effective dyad management model, involving the pairing of physician and administrative leaders.
WellSpan Health. Based in York, Pa., WellSpan Health employs a dyad management model in both its East and West divisions with clinical and administrative leaders closely collaborating at each clinical site, on a regional level, and then corporately. More than half of WellSpan’s roughly 1,300 physicians—hospitalists, primary care physicians, and specialists—are employed by the medical group, which is on a par organizationally with the six hospital, ambulatory care, rehabilitation, and post-acute care divisions.
“We use a dyad model starting at each practice site starting with the site medical director and a lay practice manager,” says Tom McGann, MD, executive vice president of clinical practice, who is paired with the system executive vice president and COO. “We take the dyad model all the way up the organization from practice sites to regional organization, and then to corporate.”
Baylor Scott & White Health. Established through a 2013 merger, Dallas-based Baylor Scott & White Health has two large employed medical groups with slightly different cultures, plus a group of some 4,000 independent credentialed physicians. The Scott & White division has had a dyad business model since 2000, providing nearly seamless integration and blurring the line between hospitals and clinics. The Baylor division, described as a “confederacy of private practices that have a common management structure,” is becoming similarly aligned.
Baylor Scott & White Health has a clinical leadership council combining all clinical and some administrative functions, which meets monthly on issues such as care standardization, quality performance, and population health.
