March 16, 2022

Can’t we all just get along?  Those words famously spoken by Rodney King during the 1992 Los Angeles riots ring out, even today, as a call to our better nature.  It’s the idea that humankind has the capacity to come together even in the midst of mistrust and mutual suspicion.  The underlying spirit of this mantra has been seen before.  Ten days before his assassination, President John Kennedy directed NASA to draw up plans for cooperating with the Soviet Union in space exploration—an extraordinary gesture during the height of the Cold War.  In the next decade, President Richard Nixon implemented a policy of détente with that same superpower.  Finding ways to cooperate—even in the midst of continuing differences—helped to reduce tensions and lay the groundwork for mutually-beneficial gains.

It is unusual to see competitors coming together; and, yet, when it does occur, it usually brings about benefits to both rivals.  Everybody wins.  That’s the idea behind new cooperative efforts we’re currently seeing in the hospital industry.

United We Stand

According to a March 10 report by the Associated Press (AP), six U.S. health systems have formed a strategic alliance to share ideas, promote best practices and advance innovations in human resources.  To accomplish these lofty goals, these six systems have formed a new entity: Evolve Health Alliance (EHA).  Members of EHA include:

• AdventHealth, Altamonte Springs, Florida
• Atrium Health, Charlotte, North Carolina
• Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, Michigan
• Intermountain Healthcare, Salt Lake City, Utah
• Northwell Health, New Hyde Park, New York
• OhioHealth, Columbus, Ohio

So, what we have here is a truly multi-regional consortium of care institutions, representing the various geographical reaches of our country: Northeast, Midwest, Southeast and West.  This regional divergence can only act to enhance what EHA is trying to achieve.  Getting together to observe the different ways various clinical and administrative tasks are done in each region of the country is an exciting start toward the building of a better set of best practices.  Taking what works best in each region and discarding those things that are seen by the group as less efficient and effective are key steps in the mutual improvement that EHA seeks.

Mutual Objectives

According to the alliance, the initial phase of information sharing will be related to the following areas:

• Best practices for the well-being of employees
• Workforce data and analytics that provide insight into how human capital programs and operations can be redefined
• Collaboration to enhance innovation and implementation of diversity and inclusion programs
• Ad hoc reciprocal agreements to help address staffing needs
• Enabling human resources teams to remain ahead of the curve amid continuously changing external factors.

According to Heather Brace, senior vice president and chief people officer of Intermountain Healthcare, as well as co-chair of Evolve Health Alliance:

Collaboration is key for health care systems to successfully adapt to changing conditions and prepare for the future.  We know this alliance will help us evolve policies, practices and initiatives that ultimately benefit our patients and the communities we serve.

Isn’t that the purpose of cooperation: to help the participants and ultimately the people at large?  Though cooperation between competitors is nothing new, the EHA collaborative experiment has its immediate roots in a modern crisis: the coronavirus event.  According to Maxine Carrington, senior vice president, chief people officer at Northwell Health and the Alliance’s other co-chair, these inter-system cooperative efforts had their genesis in the COVID pandemic, when various hospitals began sharing problems and possible solutions with each other.  Clinicians and decision-makers were desperate to gain new insight from others on the front lines.  How were other hospitals or systems taking care of patients or implementing policies?  Inquiring minds wanted to know.  This led to an incipient collaboration among hospitals that ultimately led to the formation of EHA.

Throughout the pandemic, health systems experienced severe staffing shortages, as well as extreme burnout among their staff.  Higher-paying travel nurse opportunities caused many hospitals to see a limited staff further diminished.  As a result, these facilities have had to spend more on salaries, sign-on bonuses and contract labor.  One of the key goals of EHA is to come up with ways to alleviate these financial stressors.  The group will also focus heavily on efforts to better retain their existing workforces. Part of that will involve shared skills development opportunities and programs for both clinical and non-clinical staff to collaborate and trade ideas with other systems.

We at MiraMed Global Services applaud efforts to find solutions to difficult problems in these turbulent times.  We are always available to assist in any way we can.  For a list of our hospital-specific business solutions, please visit info@miramedgs.com.