By Roy Bejarano, Co-Founder & CEO — SCALE Healthcare
The healthcare ecosystem is complex and customer-driven. As health systems face margin compression, strategic partnerships are crucial to improvement. Leveraging strategic partnerships can help optimize growth, improve patient care, increase access to new technologies, and more.
I believe that strategic partnerships are an often untapped resource in healthcare. More often, we find our clients at SCALE Healthcare discover that partnerships are the key to creative growth and keeping up with the changing needs of the healthcare industry at large.
Related: How Investing in Strategic Partnerships Can Help Grow Your Business
How strategic partnerships help companies scale
The healthcare industry is consistently evolving. It's not enough to pursue partnerships; the goal of any organization should be to secure the right partnerships. These well-matched relationships can be an accelerant for growth and combatting margin compression.
Maintaining positive relationships and forging new ones can drive improved performance in an era when the needs of patients and the industry are changing. While, traditionally, single-specialty add-ons or new market acquisitions have been key for value creation within healthcare, strategic partnerships may offer more value and benefits.
Meeting the needs of patients
The healthcare system in America gets more complex every day. Patients are more informed, demanding, and empowered than ever before. The pandemic threw many healthcare organizations for a loop as they struggled to keep up with a system constantly in flux.
Patients have more choices than ever before, and they're making them based on their personal preferences — not just what the doctor recommends. In fact, according to research conducted by Accenture, 80% of patients said they would switch doctors if their current provider did not offer an appointment within 48 hours or less; 60% would switch if the practice didn't accept their insurance; and 50% would leave if they couldn't schedule an appointment within two days.
Keeping up with these ever-tightening demands of patients can be an overwhelming challenge for healthcare organizations to address. A partnership could be one way to meet the needs of these patients through more robust referral networks and patient recruitment.
Partnerships illustrate that two entities are stronger together than they would be on their own. The committed, recurring partnership helps both organizations form a solid off-market value proposition.
Related: How Healthcare Companies Have Embraced Digitalization
Effective scaling
Not only can strategic partnerships help organizations reach new markets by leveraging another company's resources, such as their distribution channels or customer base, but they can also enable companies to scale their operations. By working together with other companies, organizations, and individuals with complementary skill sets, you'll be able to recruit additional talent that will help both parties achieve shared goals more efficiently than if they were acting independently of one another or even competing against each other.
There has been an overwhelming push for integrated health services in the United States, though many organizations have struggled to provide seamlessly-integrated services to patients. There has also been an increased interest in shifting the traditional fee-for-service model to a value-based care model.
These market demands further illustrate the benefits of strategic partnerships and how those partnerships could lead to growth. The expectations heaped on healthcare organizations are expanding, and in order to meet and exceed those expectations, many organizations will need to consider the role of strategic partnerships.
Related: Lessons from Running a Healthcare Startup
A mutually beneficial arrangement
Simply paying a “finders fee” to another organization for patient referrals is not a strategic partnership. Strategic partnerships are mutually beneficial and further the efforts and success in various areas for both parties. Through expertise consolidation, patient volume growth, and solving specific execution challenges, there may be limitless opportunities for what a strategic partnership could do for the involved parties.
With the turn of the new year, it is a prime time for businesses to survey what has worked for them — and what may need to be retooled. The status quo may no longer be enough in the rapidly changing healthcare world. When businesses take a comprehensive look at what they may excel at or what they may need to work on, it makes the role of strategic partnerships clear. What partners would be most beneficial? What could you, as an organization, bring to the table in a partnership scenario? What risks may you encounter, and conversely, what are the rewards? These are all questions organizations may ask themselves when reviewing how a strategic partnership could help them.
Successful partnerships in healthcare require commitment, regular reviews, and hard work. However, when approached correctly, strategic partnerships can significantly benefit all involved.
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