Hospital efforts at clinical integration span a broad spectrum of arrangements. At one end are targeted initiatives by a hospital and a subset of its voluntary medical staff to address a particular clinical condition or procedure.
For example, a hospital and its orthopedic surgeons work together on an initiative to reduce the costs of knee or hip implants by developing specific protocols and concentrate implant purchases from a smaller number of manufacturers. At the other end are health systems in which physician groups and hospitals are under the same ownership or are otherwise fully integrated economically.
There are arrangements at all points along the continuum. For example, hospitals in the "middle" of the spectrum would include those who employ a substantial number but far less than all of their physicians. Another example in the middle of the continuum would be a hospital that has an active physician-hospital organization. Some hospitals and physicians have long-established approaches to clinical integration. Others are starting with limited initiatives, and plan to expand if these prove successful.
The benefits of clinical integration include:
* A patient's status is tracked from setting to setting with no gaps in continuity of care;
* Chances of medication errors or mistakes are reduced;
* Duplication is eliminated for both clinical and administrative work; and
* Hospitals and physicians share the cost of information technology.
