Dive Brief:
- Tucson Medical Center has founded the not-for-profit Southern Arizona Hospital Alliance along with four rural hospitals, in a bid to ensure that the hospitals remain open and independent. The rural hospitals are Benson Hospital, Mount Graham Regional Medical Center, Northern Cochise Community Hospital and Copper Queen Community Hospital.
- The group aims to leverage their combined resources and to use their group status to positively influence purchasing, grant-writing, recruitment and specialty care.
- The group hopes to spare its members the fate of the many rural hospitals nationwide facing closure; according to the National Rural Health Association, more rural hospitals have closed since January 2013 than in the entire 10 years prior.
Dive Insight:
While the hospitals will remain financially independent of one another, they intend for the alliance to improve their overall efficiency and individual fiscal strength. Their creation of a nonprofit organization will make it possible for them to apply for grants as a single entity and to undertake group purchasing.
The arrangement provides structure to the relationships the hospitals had already built.
"We work closely with Tucson Medical Center and the other hospitals in this alliance already, with patient care, staff training and other resources that we all need," Roland Knox, CEO of Northern Cochise Community Hospital, told the Arizona Daily Star. "It made sense to formalize those informal agreements. This is an enhancement of relationships we already have."
Want to read more? You may enjoy this story about how two hospital operators are bucking the rural health crisis.