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/