Collaboration across clinical silos

We face significant challenges to healthcare integration as well as tremendous opportunities to advance healthcare reform as we endeavor to provide a coordinated continuum of high-value services to defined populations for which we are clinically and fiscally accountable. As we move away from fee-for-service and poorly coordinated care toward value-based and bundled care, systems such as UnityPoint Health and clinical entities such as Piedmont Heart are leading the way, breaking down their clinical silos, improving value and access, and gaining patient loyalty. Evidence points us to sound principles that can inform the clinical integration process. Health systems must reinvent themselves, reengineer clinical operations, and streamline processes, all of which require collaboration across traditional silos, both inside our organizations and outside into our wider communities, to ensure that our patients receive the safe, high-value care they deserve.