Managing the transition to integrated health care organizations.

Today's successful community hospitals should and will evolve into integrated health care organizations (IHCOs) that will share several common characteristics. IHCOs will have a community--not a membership--orientation, and this will be a distinguishing characteristic and a source of market appeal. The transition to IHCO will be a slow one, and to prosper, the IHCO will have to accommodate both price-oriented markets and traditional ones. Successful IHCOs will expand technical skills and capabilities to control costs and quality. New strategic competencies will have to be developed, and to do this, emerging IHCOs will improve the ability of managers to support decisions and sell them both to the buyers and the public at large. Excellent patient care will rest upon better trained, advised, and informed management teams. Making the change to an IHCO will take time and money, but organizations that make steady progress are likely to succeed.