Physician-hospital alignment is becoming more important as hospitals seek to lower costs, improve care and prepare themselves for payment models that reward collaboration. Kenneth Cohn, MD, MBA, FACS, a practicing surgeon and the author of Getting It Done, discusses seven problems that plague physician alignment attempts — and how hospitals can achieve integration in spite of them.

Dr. Cohn has written several books on collaboration in healthcare. His latest, Getting It Done: Experienced Healthcare Leaders Reveal Field-Testing Strategies for Clinical and Financial Success, is available at http://gettingitdonebook.com.

1. Physicians are trained to be individualists. Dr. Cohn says while collaboration is essential to the next wave of payment models in healthcare — bundled payments and ACOs, to name a few — hospitals may struggle to align with individualistic physicians. "I think the most glaring reason it's so difficult to align is the way we're all trained," he says. "Physicians have very different backgrounds and training and experience, and we tend to personalize our differences."

Continued on beckershospitalreview.com