Canada’s Vancouver Island Health Authority (Island Health) provides health care services through a network of hospitals, clinics, health units, community-based services, home support, and residential care centers for over 767,000 people throughout Vancouver Island and surrounding areas. Island Health pioneered in developing a Hospitalist service in British Columbia in 2000, establishing a small group of Hospitalists to work at two hospitals. However, enthusiasm for the practice waned each time the Island Health Administrators and the Hospitalists met to renew their contract.

Between 2000 and 2014 Island Health and the Hospitalists had gone through contentious contract negotiations four times. When their fourth contract expired on June 30, 2014, neither side was optimistic about how negotiations would proceed. Both parties recognized the critical need to build a new relationship and made changes in personnel in the fall of 2015 to get the relationship back on track. But the relationship was so broken that contract negotiations went into a standstill; neither side knew how to proceed. Simply put, both sides were stuck.

Kim Kerrone, Island Heath’s Vice-President, Chief Financial Officer, Legal Services & Risk attended a presentation on the Vested business model and thought “Could Vested be applied to the Island Health and Hospitalists’ relationship to get them unstuck?”

Kerrone went back to Island Health Administrators and Hospitalists and recommended they look into the Vested collaborative model. Both parties agreed to send key leaders and stakeholders, including 12 Island Health Administrators and nine Hospitalists, to a three-day “Alignment Workshop” on May 30, 2016 to explore if Vested would be a good fit for their relationship and to align on a Statement of Intent for the relationship.  The workshop was a turning point for the parties – with the decision to use the Vested methodology to help them shift from an arms-length transactional agreement to a highly collaborative and transparent Vested agreement.

The results were nothing short of a stunning turnaround in the health of the relationship.

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