When it comes to successfully engaging physicians in behavior change—particularly when you're looking to improve quality and decrease costs—one of the most important components is ensuring hospital and physician goals are aligned with one another. But with many incentive-based quality initiatives focused on primary care providers in the ambulatory space, hospitals and health systems often have limited options when it comes to aligning with specialists.

Lately, I've had a fair number of organizations coming to me with this challenge, and for most of these organizations, I usually recommend they explore a Hospital Efficiency Improvement Program, or HEIP.