Collaboration can work--given the right commitment. Interview by Donald E.L. Johnson.

Abstract

Community health care networks require an unprecedented level of collaboration between hospitals and other providers. But how can hospitals that are steeped in a competitive mindset convert to a collaborative approach, especially if they have competed directly? In the following interview with Donald E.L. Johnson, editor and publisher of Health Care Strategic Management, Len B. Preslar Jr., president of The North Carolina Baptist Hospitals Inc., in Winston-Salem explains how to overcome impediments to collaboration. There is an increasing recognition by hospital leaders of the need to collaborate but a continuing underestimation of the time and energy needed to make it work.