Gartner: Care Delivery Organization (CDO)

Care delivery organizations or CDOs serve the mission of delivering healthcare related services. Hospitals and hospital systems comprise a critical component of another important part of the healthcare delivery organizations. They play an essential role in providing important services to patients by ensuring protective, promotive, diagnostic, preventive, curative and rehabilitative measures. The current healthcare delivery systems in different countries including the USA is a conglomerate of different entities including healthcare practitioners, organizations, agencies, providers, etc, all of which share a common goal of effective care delivery with an independent operation. However, due to sweeping reconfiguration, some healthcare delivery organizations are facing challenges with their adaptability and cost effectiveness. To overcome these challenges, organizations require unprecedented levels of coordination and alignment besides preserving an environment that nurtures individual creativity. Healthcare delivery organizations should place patients at the center of their care delivery process comprising an intricate network of care providers, clinicians, medical devices, and other systems. This will help them overcome the operational barriers like rising costs, poor care delivery, uneven care quality etc. To retain the healthcare quality, care delivery organizations should therefore leave a supply-driven health care system organized around what physicians do and move toward a patient-centered system organized around what patients need. This way they can preserve their care quality and also improve patient health outcomes. However, adapting this transformation is overarching strategy and not a single step. It will require restructuring how health care delivery is organized.