Physician and Hospital Alignment in America

When it comes to the word alignment, the first thing that comes to mind is automobile- my car. Without it being aligned, steering the car becomes difficult and tires tend to deteriorate unevenly and untimely. Anything not in its proper place or position tends to be underutilized and loses its savor.

In the healthcare industry, the term alignment applies to something deeper. The idea of alignment started in the 1980s and 1990s. Though the term used then was “integration”- an activity that combines several activities such as administration and strategies by several parties. It implies that the parties involved merged all operations into one and operate as one big entity. However, alignment does not necessarily mean full merging.

Physician and hospital alignment refers to different methods of collaboration between physicians and hospitals to offer phenomenal quality care services and desirable results to all patients. The enactment of Obamacare in 2014 did instigate alignment back into the healthcare system as it was long put away with after it was first talked about in the 80s and 90s. Obamacare encourages Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) among physicians, hospitals and all other healthcare leaders in shared responsibility to deliver services that can be accounted has of good quality and relatively lower cost

The Physician hospital alignment is a strategy to bring about quality increase and financial control of healthcare services and outcomes. The alignment is also of the school of thought that if physicians and hospitals share the same reimbursement purse they will be forced to work with each other to achieve great financial and clinical healthcare outcomes.

For hospitals, alignment seem to mean a physician staying with the system as an employee or affiliate and continuously furthering his or her career goals and objective with them, meeting physician’s needs, Accountable care, Long term sustenance. When the idea of alignment came into being in the 1990s hospitals realized that buying a medical practice or having physicians as employees does not automatically mean there will be a change in the way physicians relate with and treat their patients. This alignment system decades ago generally generated higher overhead cost and poor sequence. Though the emergence of Obamacare has helped straighten this out better.

For Physicians, alignment seems more complicated. It’s everything from their mode of operation as an individual or practice to compensation and incentives. These include: physician- patient rapport, administration, practice solidity, compensation, professional sovereignty, and life- work balance just to mention a few, ability to share risk,

To experience a triumphant clinical integration physicians and hospitals must align especially since the United Sates healthcare system is currently undergoing a lot of reform and slides to a domain where provider is being paid based on the quality of care rendered to their patients and easy access. This alignment ensures that physicians and hospital share from the saving when performance threshold are met. For the shared saving s to occur aligning both parties’ goals and objective id of essence. In reverse, if performance levels are not met, physicians and hospitals share the risk of no payment, payment cut, or banishment form the network.