Enhancing Care Delivery Through Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration: A Case Study

This exploratory research investigates the factors contributing to and detracting from collaboration across professional groups that are working within an academic medical center. Examined within the context of three recently created service lines, the study uses both objective performance data and perceptual data obtained from the physicians, nurses, and administrators. A similar set of factors emerged across all three service lines and professional groups. These factors were highly correlated with the perceived success of the collaborative efforts in producing positive outcomes in both quality and efficiency of care, patient satisfaction, and improved work environment. Findings of the study highlight the importance of shared values, trust, and personal engagement--all empirically demonstrated to be linked with the participants' perceptions of successful collaboration. The study, however, failed to find improvement in the objective performance data analyzed. In addition, individual professional groups were found to have differing views of the collaborative environment, raising important issues for the management of collaborative efforts in the hospital setting.