Managing Workforces for Mission-Driven Health Care
Balancing education, research, and patient care missions while competing for top talent and adapting to industry pressures demands unique workforce expertise.
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Why Academic Medical Centers are at a Crossroads
Academic medical centers operate at the intersection of multiple, often competing missions. Clinical care, education, and research each place different demands on faculty, leaders, and staff—yet roles, expectations, and incentives are frequently asked to serve all three at once.
Add in complex governance structures, funding models, regulatory pressures, and rapidly changing care delivery demands, and alignment becomes difficult to sustain. Without deliberate workforce design, these tensions can lead to unclear expectations, strained capacity, and difficulty attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent across the enterprise.
Partnering with SullivanCotter
Help To Build a Framework for the Future
For academic medical centers, SullivanCotter helps leaders navigate the intersection of clinical care, education, and research—assessing how roles, governance, and organizational structures support mission alignment and performance.
Through our integrated workforce solutions—spanning faculty physicians, advanced practice providers (APPs), executives, and employees—we help academic medical centers design structures that balance competing priorities and enable accountability. Grounded in industry data and real-world AMC experience, our approach helps leaders move beyond incremental change—supporting intentional workforce design, clearer accountability, and faster progress toward strategic goals.
How We Help
SullivanCotter provides workforce analytics, compensation insight, and strategic advisory services tailored to the unique operating environment of academic medical centers.
Operating Model & Strategy Alignment
Design organizations that support leadership effectiveness and strategy execution.
Organizational Design & Workforce Structure
Align roles, responsibilities, and capabilities to support organizational priorities and performance.
Job Architecture
Define roles, levels, and expectations to support clarity and consistency across the organization.
Workforce Compensation Benchmarking
Benchmark compensation against the market to assess competitiveness and inform pay decisions.
Compensation Design & Total Rewards
Design rewards that align with performance, retention, and organizational priorities.
Operating Model & Strategy Alignment
Design organizations that support leadership effectiveness and strategy execution.
Organizational Design & Workforce Structure
Align roles, responsibilities, and capabilities to support organizational priorities and performance.
Job Architecture
Define roles, levels, and expectations to support clarity and consistency across the organization.
Workforce Compensation Benchmarking
Benchmark compensation against the market to assess competitiveness and inform pay decisions.
Compensation Design & Total Rewards
Design rewards that align with performance, retention, and organizational priorities.
Performance Analytics & Advisory Services
Develop incentives and goals that reinforce operating and strategic priorities.
Clinical Workforce Optimization
Optimize how physicians, APPs, and the broader care team work together—ensuring roles are aligned and operating at the top of their license.
Partner with SullivanCotter
Through Co-Sourcing
SullivanCotter’s co-sourcing model provides embedded support within your HR and compensation function—delivering ongoing benchmarking, administration, and advisory expertise.
We work alongside your team to maintain operational continuity, strengthen governance, and ensure consistent, data-driven execution. Our approach helps organizations manage complexity while building long-term internal capability.
Learn MoreCase Study
Crafting Care Model Design To Enhance A Unique Mission
Client
Large academic medical center with 700+ APPs
Strategic Focus
Improving the practice and utilization of a critical workforce.
Challenge
Misalignment in care roles
creating unengaged workforce
and high APP turnover.
A staged approach—focused on hospital medicine, oncology, and cardiology to start—was operationalized for a large academic medical center. Turnover decreased through clarified APP work expectations and targeted compensation increases, while APP encounters grew by 500%. See how the transformative system is now being expanded to other specialties.
Read the Case Study
Featured Surveys
SullivanCotter surveys deliver market intelligence specific to the nuanced workforce structures, compensation models, and governance practices of academic medical centers—providing leaders with credible data to support informed decision-making.
Health Care Workforce Premium Bundle
Includes six survey reports: Advanced Practice Provider Compensation and Productivity, Health Care Management and Executive Compensation, Health Care Staff Compensation, Medical Group Executive Compensation, Physician Compensation and Productivity, and Physician Executive Compensation.
Pulse on the Industry
Stay current with research and thought leadership from SullivanCotter on workforce analytics, operating models, retention drivers, and organizational alignment across academic medicine.
Our Full Capabilities
There’s Much More To SullivanCotter Than Just Compensation Data
Our Full Capabilities
There’s Much More To SullivanCotter Than Just Compensation Data
How does your health care workforce compare to its peers? At SullivanCotter, we deliver sophisticated analytics and actionable insights to help you evaluate your organization’s size, structure, cost, and performance — so you can make confident, data-driven decisions.
SullivanCotter Solutions:
Workforce Metrics Benchmarking
Learn MoreYour system’s organizational design, operating models, and workforce structures are deeply interconnected. How can you ensure they’re all working in alignment to support strategy, performance, and care delivery? We partner with health care leaders to build dynamic and scalable solutions that adapt to evolving market demands.
SullivanCotter Solutions:
Operating Model & Strategy Alignment
Organizational Design & Workforce Structure
Learn MoreYour people are your purpose. Design total compensation and rewards programs that attract, retain, and motivate the right talent. Using deep industry insight, proprietary benchmarking data, and tailored consulting, we partner with organizations to build competitive pay structures that balance workforce needs with overall financial imperatives.
SullivanCotter Solutions:
Workforce Compensation Benchmarking
Compensation Design & Total Rewards
Fair Market Value & Commercial Reasonableness
Learn MoreSullivanCotter helps health care leaders improve workforce effectiveness and organizational performance by aligning strategy, structure, and talent. Through data-driven benchmarking and expert guidance, we enable organizations to optimize team effectiveness, support leadership development and succession planning, and accelerate change.
SullivanCotter Solutions:
Performance Analytics & Advisory Services
Leadership Succession & Development
Physician Affiliation & Optimization
Learn MoreLet’s Architect Your Solution
Ready to explore new ways to support your academic medical center and its workforce?
Contact SullivanCotter to get started.
