A recent blog post from MedSpeed provides us with the meaning of Systemness, a term that is being used more and more frequently in healthcare. The word itself is a bit clumsy, but its meaning very much affects the industry according to the post.
A recent post from the Advisory Board Company describes it this way, "at its essence, systemness is about integrating all aspects of a health system's governance, operations, and workflows—across all technologies, clinicians, and locations—to deliver seamless, cost-effective, high-quality care."
The Advisory Board recently conducted a survey of over 150 health system executives, and the conclusion was that those leaders said, "in no uncertain terms that their organizational success depends on greater integration, and greater integration depends on their ability to do concrete things that reduce variation, improve coordination, and improve the flow of information."
We too recently surveyed more than 100 healthcare leaders on issues related to systemness. In that survey that we conducted with Becker's Hospital Review, 85% of executives responded that they know what an efficient and integrated organization looks like, yet 40% of them acknowledge that they are unsure of how to get there. Unfortunately, what that means is that while the majority of hospital and health system executives can visualize an integrated organization's system, nearly half don't know what to do to make that happen.
To read the blog post in full and learn more about Systemness, click here.