Integrated delivery systems/networks in the uncertain future. Strategic stakeholder management, Round One continued.

This article presents an analysis of Round One data with a focus on integrated delivery systems/networks (IDS/Ns). These complex, multifaceted organizations are growing in importance in the turbulent health care industry. The emergence of these multi-organizational forms requires that all health care industry organizations--medical groups, hospitals, payer organizations, suppliers--adapt to the ever-increasing demands placed on them as the industry experiences revolutionary changes. The findings presented in this article were compiled from the responses of 580 health care industry experts about the uncertain future facing health care executives. These respondents represented virtually every health care organizational form, including medical groups, physicians, hospitals, payer organizations, academic researchers, pharmaceutical firms and other health care industry suppliers. Each of these health care respondent panels answered hundreds of questions pertaining to both the present (1994) and the future (1999). These analyses seek to describe the different relationships between medical groups, their stakeholders and IDS/Ns, and how they will change over the years of 1994 to 1999. We also present experts' perceptions and predictions about five other key stakeholders of medical groups--managed care organizations, governments, employers, system hospitals and patients.