Collaboration

As the Jumpstart team has worked with health system leaders across the country, it has become apparent that building new, high-margin revenue-producing products must be a top priority in 2023. Yet, executive teams are stretched past their capacity to manage existing operations and have limited experience creating new products. For this reason, leaders may find collaboration with peer systems to be the most effective strategy.

Last month, Jumpstart hosted our first group of healthcare leaders in Nashville to explore the idea of regional systems partnering together to build new, high-margin revenue-producing products. 

The eight assembled leaders included a diverse set of backgrounds, including health systems, ambulatory providers, nurses, payors, and academic research.   While it was important to include voices and perspectives across healthcare, we focused on finding solutions for health systems.

We intentionally invited organizations with deep leadership teams and strong financial positions that operate in geographically distinct regions and therefore do not directly compete.   This allowed everyone to be open and honest in collaboration to solve the most pressing needs facing our industry.

Ampersand Partners facilitated the discussion and helped the executives get the most out of the half-day session. They used a set of frameworks and models collectively called Design Thinking to help us better understand the needs and uncover potential areas for innovation to find new high-margin revenue streams aligned with the health systems’ mission. As Todd McCullough, Principal at Ampersand, explained, “Design Thinking has developed over the last 25 years as a way to pursue innovation as a discipline. Partly because of its complexity, healthcare has been a laggard in adoption, but we are excited to see an uptick recently.”

The day was incredibly productive and successful. Participants were open and collaborative. We came away with a list of potential new businesses and opportunities that could be used to strengthen the financial health of regional systems while improving patient outcomes and reducing costs.

We returned to our respective geographies with many more ideas than if we had done the same process independently. Health systems are facing challenges on many fronts. It is nice to collaborate together with peer systems. As you think about playing offense and developing new revenue sources, explore working with peer systems in other geographies across the US. It was incredible to see creative leaders developing new ideas and building on top of one another in fast-paced collaboration.