U.S. Hospitals Increasingly Collaborate To Provide Needed Services

Main Category: Primary Care / General Practice
Also Included In: Public Health;  IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 23 Oct 2008 - 5:00 PDT

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Hospitals nationwide increasingly are collaborating with each other to offer services that previously were unavailable at the facilities and to learn about other programs, according to Rick Wade, senior vice president of the American Hospital Association, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. Wade said such collaborations range from physician exchanges to telemedicine agreements, under which specialists from large urban hospitals consult with physicians at smaller, rural hospitals. He added that the partnerships are particularly common among children's hospitals, which "have a common mission and often a common structure."

The Democrat-Gazette examined such collaboration between physicians from Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Arkansas Children's Hospital. Under the partnership, which will begin in December, Cincinnati physicians will travel to Arkansas Children's Hospital once monthly to perform procedures that previously were only performed out of state, and Arkansas medical personnel will travel to Cincinnati to teach hospital staff about their patient-transport program, the Democrat-Gazette reports.

Jonathan Bates, Arkansas Children's president and CEO, in a statement said that the arrangement will help the hospital "reduce a significant backlog of patients who need multiple urological procedures," and the Democrat-Gazette reports the collaboration "will save families the stress and cost of traveling for weeks at a time." Herman Rumpke, assistant vice president for business and planning development at the Cincinnati hospital, said that the facility is interested in learning about the Arkansas patient-transport program as part of its plan to offer children subspecialty services near their homes. Arkansas Children's has "become one of the authorities in this area, and we're looking to learn," Rumpke said.

Both hospitals have expressed interest in developing the affiliation and adding more exchange programs in the future. Rumpke said, "The more we can complement each other in terms of expertise, the better care that's going to be delivered" (Park, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 10/20).

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