Clinical integration has increasingly been discussed as the vehicle to accomplish what is necessary to be accountable for care.  But even among those commentators who have gotten beyond the antitrust notions of clinical integration, few really describe the focus of change that can create a truly clinically integrated environment, nor how those changes can make a difference. For some time now, we have touted clinical integration as a way to reorganize clinical and administrative processes of care, particularly among physicians and the other clinicians who work with them, but also in relationship to hospitals. (See issues: #70, #67, #60) Now, Alice and Jim Reinertsen MD, have created a Clinical Integration Self Assessment tool which elucidates 17 distinct attributes of clinically integrated programs, whether within a physician group, by a hospital with its newly employed physicians, within the organized medical staff, or in a newly coalescing ACO-like entity.  All ought to take into account the range of issues identified, but in slightly different ways.  We are also explicitly calling for those who may use the tool, to revise, refine and add to it.

In her article in Medical Economics “Making Clinical Integration Work” Alice focuses on how clinical integration is meaningful to small physician practices.  In their brief piece for the Health Forum, “Clinical Integration: Getting From Here to There” Alice and Jim Reinertsen focus on the hospital-physician nexus of clinical integration.  Clinical integration of various kinds is going to be the sine qua non of health care delivery which will succeed in an environment of heightened quality expectations, the need for better patient safety, diminishing reimbursement, and pressure for contained costs.