Advancing healthcare delivery: Embedding dyadic leadership throughout an academic medical centre
Abstract
Healthcare organisations face increasingly complex challenges, including rising patient acuity, workforce shortages, cost pressures, reimbursement constraints and uncertain legislation. To address these pressing issues and drive operational and financial improvements, it is crucial to move beyond siloed thinking and embrace the power of dyadic leadership models. This paper aims to demonstrate the critical importance of clinical/operational dyadic partnerships in redesigning healthcare delivery and improving patient outcomes. By examining real-world examples focused on enhancing patient flow, efficiency, quality, safety and experience, the paper provides practical insights into building trust-based relationships, establishing effective governance models, clarifying roles and responsibilities, selecting accountable dyadic partners, creating and executing on shared goals, and developing essential leadership competencies. The paper will equip readers with methods for fostering successful dyadic leadership team building, enabling them to elevate healthcare delivery to new heights and enhance effectiveness as leaders. Specifically, this paper addresses the following: (1) cultivating trusting and collaborative relationships among interdisciplinary team members to leverage diverse perspectives in problem-solving and decision-making processes; (2) designing and implementing a comprehensive process for establishing effective dyadic partnerships and governance models in process design and improvement initiatives, ensuring inclusive stakeholder participation; (3) enhancing role clarity between dyadic partners, enabling them to work synergistically towards achieving optimal patient care outcomes; (4) developing strategies for assessing, selecting and holding dyadic partners accountable, facilitating a culture of shared responsibility and continuous improvement; and (5) identifying and fostering essential leadership competencies required in dyadic models, empowering healthcare professionals to drive transformative change within their organisations. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/
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Author's Biography
Pradipta Komanduri , MHA, FACHE, serves as the Chief Operating Officer at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital. In her role, she leads hospital operations, patient flow, perioperative and procedural services, clinical service lines, ambulatory operations, major capital and construction projects, and other nonclinical operational departments. Ms Komanduri is an Editorial Board member for the Journal of Healthcare Management, actively engages with the Colorado Association of Healthcare Executives and is a Board member for the local metropolitan Denver Chapter of the American Red Cross. She was a six-time examiner for the national Malcolm Baldrige Award and holds certifications in diversity and inclusion, health equity and Lean Six Sigma.
Jean S. Kutner Jean Kutner, MD, MSPH, is the inaugural Chief Medical Officer of UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and a tenured Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Dr Kutner received her MD from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and completed residency training in internal medicine at UCSF. Subsequently, she completed an NRSA primary care research fellowship, earning an MSPH degree with honours and a fellowship in geriatric medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She is Board Certified in internal medicine, geriatrics and hospice and palliative medicine. Dr Kutner served as the Head of the University of Colorado School of Medicine Division of General Internal Medicine from 2002 to 2014.
Citation
Komanduri, Pradipta and Kutner, Jean S. (2025, June 1). Advancing healthcare delivery: Embedding dyadic leadership throughout an academic medical centre. In the Management in Healthcare: A Peer-Reviewed Journal, Volume 9, Issue 4. https://doi.org/10.69554/GNSA3276.
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