Effective physician-hospital relationships are essential to achieving improvements in clinical quality, patient safety, and economic performance. The Bard Index™ is a tool for assessing the quality and functionality of your physician-hospital alignment.

The Bard Index is a cost-effective and timely diagnostic tool that surveys physician and hospital leaders on the effectiveness of the working relationships within your organization:

• Your hospital’s commitment to partnering with its physicians
• Your medical staff’s capability for strategic, operational, and programmatic partnership

Administered as an easy and convenient Web-based survey of medical staff members and hospital leaders, The Bard Index™ catalogues indicators of the functionality of the physician-hospital relationship, such as: 

• Organizational structures that support physician-hospital alignment
• The collective capacity of the medical staff to address and resolve issues
• The nature and extent of physician participation in the hospital’s decision-making
• How effectively the organization communicates its performance objectives
• The relationship between employed and independent physicians on the medical staff

Using your survey results and our experience in administering The Bard Index™ across the spectrum of physician alignment, we can determine whether your physician-hospital relationships are adequate to meeting your goals, and recommend specific steps to get from where you are now to where you hope to be.