OPERATIONS AND STRATEGY

The Scale Imperative for Academic Medical Centers: Part 2—Case Study

Zuckerman, Alan M. FACHE, FAAHC; Golden, Robert N. MD

¹president, Health Strategies & Solutions, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

²Robert Turell professor in medical leadership, dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health, and vice chancellor for medical affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison

For more information about the concepts in this column, contact Mr. Zuckerman at [email protected].

Journal of Healthcare Management 60(2):p 86-90, March 2015.

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Abstract

In our previous column in this series (see the Operations and Strategy column in the January/February 2015 issue of JHM), we describe the scale imperative for academic medical centers (AMCs) if they wish to remain viable in a healthcare landscape characterized by consolidation, increasingly closed systems, new reimbursement models, decreased funding, and other challenges. In addition, we describe AMCs' approaches to achieving adequate scale in terms of our five-category framework. The framework, with additional examples, is revisited in the sidebar on page 87 of this issue.

Here, we discuss the case of one AMC—UW Health—that has embarked on the journey to developing scale. It hopes to leverage scale in shoring up its ability to support its missions of research and education.