Can community level cross-sector collaboration break healthcare barriers?
Written by Tom Varghese
If the healthcare sector had a slogan, “we’re all in it together,” might be the leading contender ever since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. Effective partnerships are essential for community-based solutions for advancing health equity. Many different stakeholders can lead or participate in implementing such solutions. Partners are able to deploy unique skills and resources to serve a variety of roles. The concepts of disruption, innovation, paradigm shift, and design thinking have become guiding principles for engagement in cross-sector work.
Collaboration between sectors is nothing new. ‘Health in all policies’ approaches, for example, where health impacts are considered in policy processes across government, have been developed by governments in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere. Theory suggests that collaboration might help local organisations combine their skills and resources to better meet community needs. But competing norms and priorities may create conditions for conflict. Additionally, for many small health centres, executing such changes on their own is neither efficient nor feasible. Despite their long history, little is known about the impact of cross-sector partnerships between local agencies on health outcomes.
While public-private partnerships (PPPs) are well established internationally, to date traditional procurement models have been favoured in New Zealand. There have, however, been a number of examples of partnerships between the public and private sectors to finance the delivery of projects in New Zealand. PPPs have come in for heavy criticism across the globe. Proponents believe they absolve governments of risks, but critics say the taxpayer always ends up as the ultimate backstop because it is politically difficult for them to walk away from an unfinished project.
With evidence growing that health outcomes are impacted by a wide spectrum of social determinants, not the least being housing, education, poverty and nutrition, the need for healthcare organisations to partner with groups that contribute to people’s lives and not solely to patients’ clinical outcomes is more apparent. Healthcare providers must look to adjacent sectors not only for their contributions to people’s health and wellness, but also as capabilities to be leveraged as they focus on their core competencies.
A recent survey of large healthcare organisations revealed that CEOs are trending towards engaging telecommunications companies (52%), health technology providers (60%) and insurance companies (84%) to be partners in care delivery.
Healthcare leaders may be looking to their particular expertise given that 65% believe that their ability to manage technological change threatens their organisational ability to evolve.
What will the healthcare partnership ecosystem in NZ look like in the next 5 years?
