Earlier this year, St. Luke’s Hospital, Chesterfield, Missouri announced a cardiovascular clinical affiliation with Cleveland Clinic’s Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute. This partnering is prominently displayed on the St. Luke’s website, https://www.stlukes-stl.com.
As a St. Louis resident whose family has been cared for at St. Luke’s, I have first-hand experience with the quality of the 493-bed hospital and its staff and physicians. While my family and I have no direct experience with cardiovascular services, I can only assume that they are of equal quality. After all, this is a hospital that has been ranked one of “America’s 50 Best Hospitals” by Healthgrades® each year from 2007-2015.
In today’s Population Health marketplace, what would possess a hospital with such a reputation to expend the time and money to affiliate with a “brand name,” like the Clinic? I can only speculate, but I suspect that a “perfect storm” of factors contributed to the decision:
Potential advantages to St. Luke’s can be multifold, including:
Should your hospital look into such an affiliation for strategic development of your cardiovascular service line? The most obvious advantage is enhancing the marketability of your program (just look at the St. Luke’s website). More importantly, particularly if you are an “independent” hospital, partnering with a highly regarded regional or national provider can provide you with advantages in the population health marketplace:
A rough cost-benefit analysis is a good starting point for evaluating the potential for affiliation. Initial questions to be answered include:
Answering these questions first can tell you whether or not to proceed with comprehensive strategic and feasibility assessments of your options and opportunities.
Additionally, we recommend a review of the section on Affiliations in Chapter 8, Market Positioning, Differentiation, and Branding from the book The Complete Guide to Strategic Marketing for the Cardiovascular Service Line,, published by HealthLeaders Media, 2011.