In nearly every industry, leaders have learned to focus on what they do best and bring in trusted partners to handle the rest. It is a simple principle: focus on your strengths and find others who can support the work that is essential, but outside your core competencies.
So why doesn’t that principle always apply in health care?
Health systems do have experience outsourcing certain support services. Environmental services, food service, IT infrastructure—these are areas where leaders have recognized that specialized partners can often do the work more efficiently and at scale.
But when it comes to functions that touch the patient journey more directly, like nurse triage or patient transfers, many organizations still try to manage them internally, even when it stretches their people and systems to the limit.
Health systems exist to care for people. That is the heart of what we do. But over the years, health systems have taken on more and more responsibilities that, while critical, pull focus and resources away from clinical care. Managing triage lines after hours. Coordinating time-sensitive transfers across multiple facilities. These are complex processes that require dedicated infrastructure, clinical training, and nonstop availability.
Clinicians are doing meaningful work, but they are juggling too much. Often, valuable time and energy are spent on tasks that could be handled more effectively by a partner whose sole focus is to do that work, and do it well.
This is where the right kind of outsourcing makes a difference. Not to cut corners or lose control, but to give internal teams the breathing room they need to focus on delivering care.
When nurse-first triage is handled by an experienced clinical partner, patients can reach a registered nurse any time of day and get quality clinical guidance right away. That supports better outcomes, reduces pressure on providers and builds patient trust. Similarly, when patient transfers are coordinated by a centralized team with clinical experience and dedicated workflows, systems see faster transfers and fewer delays in care. That benefits everyone—patients, providers, and operations.
These are not just workflow improvements. They are care improvements.
At Conduit Health Partners, we work with systems that are rethinking what must be done in-house, and what can be done better through partnership. These decisions are not always easy, but they are necessary. Because trying to do it all is not sustainable and in many cases, it is not serving patients or teams as well as it could.
Outsourcing does not mean giving up control. It means protecting your mission. It means letting your clinicians and operational leaders focus on the work that only they can do, while bringing in trusted partners to support the rest.
The best health systems I work with are not trying to do everything. They are focused on doing the right things and doing them well. They are building the kind of operational foundation that allows them to grow, adapt, and care for their communities with excellence.
If your team is still trying to hold it all together, I encourage you to step back and ask, what are we carrying that we do not have to? Where could a thoughtful partnership allow us to focus more on patients and less on process?
These are the questions that shape strong, future-ready systems. And now is the time to start asking them.
Dusti Browning, MSN, RN, NE-BC is the Vice President of Growth and Client Solutions for Conduit Health Partners. She joined Conduit Health Partners in 2017 to develop the Nurse Triage program. In 2018 she assumed responsibilities as System Director for Transfer Center, Triage and Virtual Care. Subsequently in 2020, she led efforts to attain URAC Health Call Center Accreditation. In her current role, Dusti is responsible for new business development, creating clinical solutions and ensuring client success.
Dusti brings over 25 years of healthcare leadership experience, including roles at The Christ Hospital Health Network and Mercy Health, where she led The Blood Cancer Center and maintained multiple accreditations for transplant and leukemia care. She has a strong track record in program development, quality improvement, and advancing access to care, with work published in Urgent Matters. Dusti holds executive nursing leadership certification, completed advanced leadership training, and has contributed to national nursing certification content and organizations.
