How Hospital Partnering Services Help Smaller Hospitals Deliver High Quality Care

Smaller hospitals, especially in rural settings, often have problems recruiting all of the resources they need to deliver high quality care. This is where hospital partnering services come in. 

What Do Hospital Partner Services Do?

One of the things the service will do is help smaller communities gain access to specialists and physicians that they can't afford to hire on permanently, or that they are having trouble locating on a full-time basis. The service takes care of recruiting and paying these specialists, and the hospital pays a commission. 

Examples of When a Partnering Service Is Needed

Your facility may have seen a recent increase in need for radiologists, but you don't have enough qualified staff. Your hospital occasionally needs someone to perform bariatric surgery, and this isn't a specialty of anyone on your staff. However, it doesn't make sense for you to hire a new surgeon, because the need for the surgeon is sporadic. These are situations when a hospital partnering service would be helpful. 

Typical Arrangements

A hospital partnering service is often required when your hospital needs a certain specialist for a few days per week, but not full time. For example, a specialist might work at your hospital one day per week, and they work at another hospital two days per week, and yet a third hospital one day every other week, and so on. The service helps form a partnership of sorts between all of these hospitals, since they are employing the same specialist. Yet, the partnering service takes care of all of the bureaucracy. The service will recruit and pay the physician. They will make sure there is a schedule that works for all of the hospitals. They will act as the middleman so that the hospitals don't have any legal obligations to one another. It is like a rental service for physicians, in many ways. 

Getting Involved with Hospital Partnering

See if there is a hospital partnering service in your area. If there is already a specialist available, you may be able to contract some of their time with little to no setup time. Some hospital partnering services can also relocate a specialty physician, if the demand is significant in your area. They set up the contracts that detail which services the physician will provide to your hospital and when. The result is better care for your patients and easier to manage costs for specialty treatments.