Clinical and Academic Enterprise Design
Contact our teamAs academic health systems grow and evolve, organizational decisions can often be made in silos, leading to internal friction and misalignment.
Chartis acts as a trusted advisor to help define how the core entities of an academic health system work together to support differentiation, scalability, and long-term growth.
Navigating the complexity of enterprise fragmentation
Enterprise fragmentation in academic medical centers (AMCs) often develops over time through disconnected governance, competing priorities, and inconsistent financial and operational structures.
- Disconnected structures: Hospital, faculty practice, and university leadership often lack a unified strategy, clear reporting lines, and governance models.
- Expectation gaps: Financial targets may not reflect healthcare operating realities, creating tension between university and health system leadership.
- Service line fragmentation: Clinical programs often span multiple departments and entities without the operational structure needed to function as an integrated service line.
The path to academic medical center alignment
Chartis partners with the nation’s leading AMCs, teaching hospitals, and faculty practices to build transparent, performance-driven organizations. Working alongside your leadership, we align and strengthen your academic and clinical structures, giving you the power to differentiate key service lines, scale priority programs, and sustain growth in a competitive marketplace.
- Governance design: We work closely with your leadership team to define how the hospital, faculty practice plan, medical school, and broader university operate together, establishing governance, reporting relationships, and decision-making structures that align stakeholders and enable more coordinated, effective execution of shared goals.
- Community physician model: We help organizations integrate community physician networks into the broader academic enterprise through operating, financial, and reporting models that support strategic growth, clinical integration, and performance visibility.
- Faculty practice plan organizational structure: We conduct a holistic assessment of your current operating model and help build integrated faculty practice plans aligned with your mission and top priorities.
- Academic & clinical program alignment & service lines: We develop adaptable, tailored frameworks that position your highest-priority clinical programs for growth, helping you differentiate in the market while scaling capabilities in a disciplined, sustainable way.
Alignment is not just about structure. It is about creating an environment where leaders are working toward shared goals, with the clarity and incentives to do so. When that happens, organizations don’t just operate differently—they grow differently. ”
Frequently Asked Questions
How does organizational alignment support growth in academic medical centers?
In AMCs, growth often stalls because the clinical, research, and education missions operate as three competing businesses rather than one unified system. Organizational alignment fixes this by creating a direct bridge between leadership and finances. For example, when an AMC aligns its financial models, clinical profits can be predictably routed to fund high-potential clinical trials, which in turn attract top-tier faculty and cutting-edge treatments. By tying governance and reporting structures to shared goals—rather than individual department silos—AMCs can reduce administrative costs, clear the bottlenecks that delay research breakthroughs, and scale up new programs quickly to capture regional market share.
How can academic health systems protect distinct missions during enterprise redesign?
Chartis helps leadership work together using custom-tailored governance models that balance the distinct needs of the School of Medicine, the clinical enterprise, and the research mission. This ensures your academic identity remains protected even as the system grows in complexity.
Existential challenges ahead: Implications of proposed funding cuts and considerations for academic health enterprises
Leaders are looking to the long-term sustainability of their academic health enterprises. We discuss initiatives to pursue, including revenue growth and cost-saving opportunities.
Related insights
