The Cleveland Clinic has long demonstrated a desire to expand its footprint beyond Northeast Ohio, and it will continue that quest through more affiliations with other health care providers.

The Clinic's Heart and Vascular Institute likely will partner with two or three more hospitals outside Greater Cleveland over the next 18 months, and more such partnerships are on the way, said Dr. Joseph Cacchione, director of clinical integration at the Heart and Vascular Institute.

“These affiliations are going to create a network of hospitals to deliver high-quality care across the country,” he said. “There is a need (for affiliations) perceived by hospitals across the nation.”

The Clinic has 12 affiliates in the United States, nine of which were created through the Heart and Vascular Institute. The most recent of those is an affiliation with Central DuPage Hospital in the Chicago suburb of Winfield, Ill.

Under the deal, Central DuPage will have more access to the Clinic's heart surgery clinical trials, treatment protocols and other research projects not currently available in the Chicago area.

The Clinic's other affiliates are in Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and West Virginia, in addition to EMH Regional Medical Center, Lake Health West, MetroHealth Medical Center and Parma Community General Hospital in Greater Cleveland.

The affiliations are designed around the needs of the local hospital and its surrounding community, but they all focus on quality and quality improvement, Dr. Cacchione said.

“There's quite a bit of variation of what hospitals need and want,” he said. “Some need to improve quality or possibly help with recruitment of surgeons.”

Hospitals that seek to affiliate with the Clinic must undergo a quality assessment, Dr. Cacchione said. The Clinic then considers the potential affiliate's patient base, processes and needed improvements, and determines what might be an appropriate affiliation for the hospital before branding it a Clinic partner, he said.

For those that pass the Clinic's quality assessment, the Clinic begins implementing its quality measures and procedures within the hospital program affiliating with the Clinic, he said.

“It's more than a placard on the front door,” Dr. Cacchione said. “We want to make our affiliates look and feel like a small Cleveland Clinic.”

Such collaboration can be a boon for both the Clinic and its affiliates, said Thomas Campanella, director of the health care MBA at Baldwin-Wallace College.

“It allows them to leverage the investment at the Cleveland Clinic in people, technology, clinical protocols, management and innovation to benefit health care organizations beyond the Cleveland Clinic itself,” he said. “It enhances the Clinic's reputation even more nationally and internationally and it could potentially lead to referrals back to the Clinic.”

Indeed, Dr. Cacchione said the Clinic's affiliates contact Clinic surgeons in difficult surgical cases and the Clinic has seen an increase in referrals from North Carolina and South Carolina.

Dr. David Herman, director of the Mayo Clinic's affiliate practice network, said the Mayo Clinic also is continuing to pursue affiliations across the country because it helps many local hospitals offer top-notch care and, if needed, helps patients transfer to a Mayo Clinic location faster.

“It allows outlying communities and hospitals to benefit from information and procedures that places like the Mayo Clinic develop,” he said. “Local hospital boards want their communities to benefit from the care of the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic or Johns Hopkins. It helps strengthen local caregivers.”

The Clinic is working to become a global brand as competition for a stagnant patient population continues in Northeast Ohio. The global branding effort should bring more money back to Cleveland and enable the health care giant to expand services at home, said Taylor Holliday, a market analyst for HealthLeaders-InterStudy, a Nashville, Tenn.-based firm that analyzes various portions of the health care industry.

“Ultimately, Cleveland Clinic's global aspirations and expansions should be good for Cleveland, spreading its reputation for top-quality health care even further while strengthening its premier health organization to the benefit of the local community,” she added.

 

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