Interview

Community Health Partnership Interview Paper Amanda Brabble HCS 413 February 1, 2011 Jeffrey Dodd Failed attempts at health care reform have led organizations to engage in a variety of adaptive strategic responses. One response was the formation of community health partnerships. These partnerships are formed to strengthen and give stability to organizations having a difficult time standing alone. Community health partnerships strive to improve local health and human services delivery to address community risk factors. A diverse array of organizations and stakeholders make up a partnership. The partnerships involve physician groups, insurers, schools, churches, etc. Measuring and tracking health status within a community, providing multifaceted services, developing community problem-solving capacity are activities included with a partnership. Health service organizations normally play a leading role in community health partnerships. The Somerbridge community health partnership, the merger between Cambridge and Somerville hospitals, lead the partnership with the city of Cambridge department of health, city of Somerville community health office, community action agency of Somerville, Centro Tresente, and Cencillio Hispano. In the Jurupa community partnership, the Riverside county department of Public Social Services in California is the lead agency. Partnerships in their infancy phase concentrate on defining its purpose, recruiting its core set of partners, clarifying its interest and expectations of partners and building initial working relationships. The health care manager’s key role is establishing collaborative proficiency and building trust. Managers collaborate with others within the partnership to acknowledge their own strengths and weaknesses and to gain from the partnership. A manager will pass to his or her employees what they have learned. The managers bring together all aspects of the partnership. They transfer this information to their organizations and the medical staff, from there each partner works together to make the partnership grow. Also managers may seek training in building shared visions, team learning mental models and other learning disciplines that build on the foundation of systems thinking. Each manager from these different organizations collaborate for the partnership to run smoothly and be productive. Developing coordination mechanisms, establishing conflict resolution procedures and reviewing and evaluating partnership activities are the aspects a partnership seeks to manage. To ensure coordination is in place, managers work with their partners to design an organizational development process that facilitates a constructive dialogue among members. The purpose of this process for the partners is to clarify their intentions share these intentions, and to find a common ground. Another way coordination between partners is kept is by paying close attention to subtleties of how partnership members interact with one another. Managers need to be alert and intervene when a partner acts or speaks in a way that may be offensive. In order for coordination to be accomplished and remain between partners, managers should build relationships and meet with other partners individually. In these meeting partners will learn more about one another and discover their feelings on key health issues. Also managers need to assess themselves and encourage others to do. Managers should determine why they decided to join the partnership and what they could learn from it. If an organization’s manager decided to join the partnership for the wrong reasons then coordination will be weak within the partnership. The community health partnership cold have better coordination if they focused more on involving everyone instead of viewing the manager as the primary partner. If a hospital joins a partnership, so does the faculty. Partnerships can be extremely intimidating to a manager, so if an organization wants to join a partnership, it should have back up for the manager. The manager can be the main spokesperson for the organization but should not be the only participant in the partnership. A partnership should also concentrate on one or two main ideas not several. Partnerships should focus on one purpose at a time instead of trying to solve many problems at the same time. Too much can overload a partnership and cause coordination to fail and confusion for all who are involved. Decisions need to involve all who participate within the partnership not just by the managers. Let each manager from the different organizations meet with their staff and then gather that data and make a decision from that, not just from what the manager believes his organization would do. Community health partnerships are formed to help a community improve its health. The partnership is made up of different organizations coming together and choosing two or purposes to fulfill. Coordination and collaboration can be lost in translation when communication between partners is not clear. A partnership should concentrate on itself as a whole and not make a manager number one. There are many factors a partnership must consider and becoming productive can be a challenge. A partnership must have a clear purpose and strong coordination. References Lombardi, D.M., & Schermerhorn, J.R. (2007). Health care management: Tools and techniques for managing in a health care environment.    National Priorities Partnership. (2010). National Priorities Partnership. Retrieved from http://www.nationalprioritiespartnership.or/PriorityDetails.aspx'id=606 Weiner, B. J., Alexander, J. A., & Zuckerman, H. S. (2000). Strategies for Effective Management Participation in Community Health Partnerships. Health Care Management, , 48-66.