For years, hospitals across the country aimed to be the one-stop shop for all healthcare needs. They owned every part of the care journey, including hospitals, physician practices, imaging centers and labs. The instinct was to build or acquire capabilities internally, on the assumption that ownership was the only reliable path to quality and control.
But C-suites are now focused on a different question.
Executives across system types have stopped asking “can we build this?” and instead posing the question: “who is the best in the world at this, and how do we build a deep relationship with them?”
The change is not about cutting corners but instead a recognition that ownership carries costs — in capital, time and management attention — that strategic partnerships can avoid, and that the fastest path to serving patients is often through an organization that has spent years getting exceptionally good at something your system has not.
Benjamin Schwartz, MD, president of academic delivery at Banner Health in Phoenix, is a proponent of this change within his integrated academic healthcare enterprise.
“For a long time, the instinct in healthcare research was to own every capability, develop every tool, and lead every discovery in-house,” Dr. Schwartz said. “We’ve moved completely past that. Today, we believe the fastest path to helping patients is knowing which partners are the best in the world at what they do and building deep, strategic relationships with them.”
The results, in Banner’s case, are measurable. A decade-old partnership with the University of Arizona has generated an estimated $59 billion in economic impact to Arizona, which he attributes directly to this strategic transformation.
“That shift in mindset is precisely what allows Banner Health to move faster, reach further, and deliver more for the patients and communities we serve,” he said.
For Marty Mann, senior vice president and chief development officer of Lifepoint Health in Brentwood, Tenn., the shift requires precision about where a large health system actually creates unique value and intellectual honesty about where it does not.
“Scale is valuable, but it does not automatically make us the subject matter expert in every area required to operate and grow a complex healthcare organization,” Mr. Mann said. “Increasingly, we are asking where our team members create unique value and where the right external partner can bring deeper expertise, greater speed or broadened capacity that would take significant time and resources to develop internally.”
The partnership mindset works in both directions. Lifepoint has also positioned itself as a strategic partner to other health systems seeking acute care, rehabilitation and behavioral health expertise, a change that treats its own capabilities as a service offered outward, not just a function managed internally.
Christine Schuster, president and CEO of Emerson Health in Concord, Mass., describes how the shift plays out at a smaller, independent system navigating the same pressures.
“Whether we are working with an academic medical center, physician organization, or specialized service provider, the goal is the same: expand access, improve quality, and keep care close to home while protecting long-term financial sustainability,” Ms. Schuster said.
Independence, she added, no longer means self-sufficiency.
“Remaining independent does not mean operating in isolation,” Ms. Schuster said. “It means having the flexibility to choose the right partners and design arrangements that benefit our patients, our organization, and the broader healthcare system.”
