A practical approach to impactful collaborations

As technology, policy shifts, and patient expectations drive a rapid evolution in health care, collaboration has become essential for long-term success. This is especially true for rural health providers, who often face distinct challenges in delivering care, including limited access to specialists and other workforce shortages, novel technology, and unique financial challenges. By partnering with external organizations, these providers can gain access to innovative tools and specialty expertise to offer diagnostic and treatment solutions that might otherwise be out of reach.

As health care organizations pursue collaborations, patient needs must remain the guiding priority. You should evaluate every partnership based on its ability to enhance care and improve outcomes. Drawing on insights from industry leaders and recent best practices, this article outlines strategies to help build and sustain collaborations that drive better outcomes for clinicians and patients alike.

Step 1: Understand your organization’s unique capabilities

Successful collaborations start with a clear understanding of your organization’s strengths and strategic needs. Before seeking partners, it’s important to conduct an honest assessment of your capabilities, gaps, and priorities. This clarity helps identify collaborators who best complement your organization. For rural health providers, strengths may include community engagement and patient-centered care, while limitations might include access to advanced technology or specialty expertise. A thorough assessment of your organization can help you:

• Prioritize high-value partnerships. Financial constraints and the complexity of managing several contracts make it impractical to pursue partnerships for every need. Sometimes, internal investments— such as staff development, infrastructure upgrades, or workflow optimization — are the best way to overcome a challenge. A clear understanding of your organization’s true needs allows you to focus on partnerships that deliver the greatest impact and long-term sustainability.
• Identify where you can meaningfully contribute. Being transparent about your strengths not only reveals where others can most effectively fill your gaps. It also helps identify where your organization might contribute to a partnership to solve a problem. For example, clinical laboratories with outreach programs sometimes collaborate regionally to form centers of excellence, with each hospital lab specializing in different tests. While individual hospitals may not have the volume to justify offering certain services on their own, combining their capabilities allows them to process more tests locally. This approach often brings financial benefits while enhancing patient satisfaction and strengthening community trust.
• Ensure collaborations solve real problems. Investing in impressive tools or services that don’t solve a genuine problem wastes valuable resources. A thoughtful assessment of your organization’s strengths and needs helps prioritize partnerships that truly enhance care, improve efficiency, and support long-term impact.
  
  

Step 2: Identify aligned collaborators that provide real value

Once you've identified the capabilities your organization needs from a partnership, you'll encounter multiple vendors or collaborators eager to engage with you. However, not all will be the right fit, especially when navigating the unique challenges of rural health care providers. To identify the best options for your organization, you should:

• Prioritize alignment in values and vision. While no two organizations will share identical values or visions, it’s essential to seek partners whose mission and approach are compatible with yours. In health care, this often means selecting partners who share your commitment to patient-centered care and high-quality service delivery. Being clear on your organization’s core values before beginning your search will help avoid future challenges caused by misalignment.
• Search for relationships that create mutual value. When both organizations benefit, they develop a shared purpose and common goals that support long-term success. For example, Mayo Clinic Laboratories is collaborating with others to expand access to advanced diagnostic tests for neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. These relationships filled gaps in Mayo Clinic Laboratories’ test offerings while providing collaborators with a broader reach to provide innovative tests to more patients.
• Recognize your full value as a partner. Even in vendor relationships that may feel transactional, your organization contributes more than just financial investment. You might help scale the use of a product, provide feedback that refines a service, or contribute data that informs future innovation. Understanding your full value helps shift the dynamic from customer to partner, leading to more strategic relationships to support your success.
  
  

Step 3: Manage relationships with transparency and flexibility

Finding the right partner is only the first step in building a successful collaboration. What truly determines the impact of a partnership is how well you manage the relationship over time. Successful collaborations rely on mutual commitment to success and having flexibility, transparency, and a willingness to adapt to keep partnerships relevant and productive over time. To foster lasting impact, you should:

• Allocate sufficient time: Successful collaboration demands more than quick, periodic check-ins. Realizing the full value for your organization requires investing time and effort to cultivate strong relationships, monitor performance, and address challenges as they arise.
• Communicate openly and honestly: Transparent communication is the foundation of any enduring collaboration. Regular, candid conversations about progress, challenges, and evolving circumstances help build trust and resilience. These discussions keep both organizations aligned and allow for proactive problem-solving. While avoiding difficult conversations may seem easier in the short term, it often leads to wasted resources and missed opportunities for innovation.
• Use data to guide decisions: Regular performance reviews are essential to effective relationship management. By jointly analyzing data and outcomes, organizations can assess whether the collaboration continues to deliver value. These data-driven insights help guide decisions about where to invest time and resources and when to pivot toward more promising opportunities.
• Remain flexible: Establishing clear, shared expectations from the outset is essential, but those expectations should evolve as circumstances change. Shifts in industry trends, regulatory requirements, and internal priorities may require revisiting and revising agreements. In some cases, this may even mean stepping away from a partnership that no longer serves its purpose. Adaptability is especially critical in rural settings where resource constraints and shifting community needs demand agile, responsive approaches to partnership management.
  
  

Unlocking the full potential of collaboration

For rural health providers, collaboration is more than a buzzword — it’s a pathway to innovation, resilience, and improved patient care. By understanding your organization’s strengths and seeking value-aligned partners, you can unlock the full potential of collaboration and address genuine needs to improve outcomes for patients. These steps pave the way for more creative solutions and ensure that partnerships remain purposeful and impactful for collaborators, clinicians, and the communities they serve.

NRHA adapted the above piece from Mayo Clinic, a programmatic partner of NRHA, for publication within the Association’s Rural Health Voices blog.
 

Mary Jo Williamson is the chief administrative officer of Mayo Collaborative Services, which includes Mayo Clinic Laboratories and Mayo Clinic Cardiac Monitoring. During her over 30-year career with Mayo Clinic, Mary Jo has held various leadership roles, including serving as chief administrative officer of Mayo Clinic in Rochester and Mayo Clinic Health System, a network of community hospitals and multispecialty clinics across 39 communities in Minnesota and Wisconsin..