New role of hospital collaboration and specialty services In this regard, the general hospital will focus on providing specialty services. Collaboration among hospitals is the recent development in reducing the cost health care (Sullivan, 2009). Moreover, the general hospital can reduce operational costs associated with a wide range of services. Collaborating with other hospitals will provide the general hospital with an opportunity to deal with specialty services and maintain high quality in the same. In normal circumstances, community general hospitals can significantly reduce costs when they focus on specialty services. From the underlying context, the general hospital can specialize in orthopaedic surgery and rehabilitation services. Therefore, special skills and knowledge will be harnessed by the hospital, as well as competent medical staff associated with the services. Assuming the role of a specialty hospital is critical if optimizing on available resources is a core objective. In addition, the probability of obtaining positive outcomes from services delivered is higher than when operating a community hospital. Specialty hospitals benefit from reduced interdepartmental conflicts. Apparently, general hospitals operate several departments that are of diverse nature. In most cases, an inter-departmental conflict among departments and the respective staff members is inevitable. Consequently, the inter-departmental conflicts affect service delivery in terms of quality and efficiency. In this regard, the general hospital can attain its objectives through the concept of team players. Research studies have indicated that patient satisfaction and increased infection rates are evidenced among hospitals offering specialty services. For a general hospital to achieve specialty hospital status, an effective collaboration with other hospitals is required. This collaboration should include sourcing of skilled physicians to coordinate orthopaedic surgery and rehabilitation services at the general hospital. In addition, the general hospital will refer patients seeking other health care services to the collaborating hospitals. From this perspective, partnering hospitals will benefit from a collaborative marketing strategy. The collaboration approach will improve consistency of service delivery in the general hospital. This consistency will be exhibited by control and management of resources, service standardization, employee competency and patient education. Once the hospital achieves the specialty status, it will benefit from differentiation as a marketing goal. In this regard, the hospital will offer differentiated health care programs compared to is competitors and partners. The differentiation factor is critical in marketing, as well as maintaining competitiveness. In addition, maintaining focus in an individual program such as total joint center in orthopaedic surgery signifies competitiveness of the facility. Moreover, the focus and physician-centrism derived from specialty programs are appealing to patients. Patients tend to trust specialty hospitals that offer improved and patient-based services. New mission and vision statements Mission statement The orthopaedic and rehabilitation center delivers innovati