Work

Partnering Care Delivery and Research to Optimize Health

Year: 2008

Type: article

Abstract: Thi s paper explores the junction of research and clinical practice, and its important role in optimizing health care.Increasingly, bi-directional linkage of practice and research is viewed as an advantage for health care organizations; the ability to create a successful relationship is critical to their positioning for competition in the modern world.The challenge that health care organizations face going forward is leveraging the full capacities and data assets of medical practices, health plans, research units, hospitals, and of course, consumers, to create new strengths and capabilities.Critical to this challenge is the ability of research to help identify the optimal ways for health care organizations and medical groups to position themselves in order to achieve their mission.Today, this mission can be referred to as the "triple aim:" maximizing patient experience, making sure we have outstanding clinical outcomes, and explicitly addressing the affordability of health care.The only way to achieve all three parts of the mission is collaboration.With these thoughts in mind, a panel of clinical leaders from three integrated, large, health care financing and delivery organizations were asked to share and discuss their comments in view of a recent article offering a new perspective for optimizing health care through research.1 The author of that paper was the introductory speaker and he presented five broad principles that could guide future work on this challenging problem.Underlying Dr. Kottke's main points is a call to move the goal of health sciences research away from merely the pursuit of knowledge and its 'translation' into clinical practice, and instead toward a partnership that optimizes clinical practice through research in order to improve the health of the population.

Source: Clinical Medicine & Research

DOI: 10.3121/cmr.2008.843