Ten years together
After creating a new model in academic health care, three partners look back at how far they've come—and look forward to future growth.
Anywhere else, Gavin Nieters's chances would have been slim to none. Born June 9, 2005, with a major malfunction in his tiny heart, Gavin needed highly specialized surgery. And the only place in the world it could be done was the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital, Fairview. When Gavin was four days old, pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon John Foker, M.D., Ph.D., cut into his small chest and, in a 12-hour operation, corrected the deadly defect.
Gavin's lifesaving surgery might not have been possible if it hadn't been for an innovative partnership forged 10 years ago between the University of Minnesota, Fairview Health Services, and University of Minnesota Physicians. By combining a community health system with an academic health center and its faculty physicians, the partnership created an entity specialized enough to function at—and advance—the leading edge of medicine, yet sturdy enough to survive in a highly competitive health-care environment.
"Our patients are truly the beneficiaries of the University-Fairview partnership," says Gordon Alexander Jr., M.D., president of University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, and University of Minnesota Children's Hospital, Fairview. "Over the past 10 years, our partnership has evolved. We had to get to know each other—to learn how best to work together and harness our strengths to achieve our unified vision of world-class patient care, research, and education."
Setting the stage
For the University, the motivation behind the merger was largely economic. In the mid-1990s, the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinics, like many of its peers, was struggling financially as it tried to provide highly specialized health-care services in an increasingly competitive managed-care environment. Its faculty physicians—then represented by 18 separate practice groups—were in the process of creating a single practice plan, University of Minnesota Physicians, which would help them thrive in the tough health-care market. But that was not going to solve the problem entirely. With the University's hospital $140 million in debt, administrators eyed a number of options, including closing, downsizing, and partnering with an existing community health-care network.
Video
Watch a short video about the University of Minnesota Physicians and the group's connection to the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview