The Best Book On Health Care Reform
The best book on health care reform — or surviving it — is the “The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care.” The decade worth of research spent understanding, studying, and ultimately offering solutions to make the health care system more accessible, higher quality, and affordable is clear.
Unlike other books, the authors, respected Harvard Business School (HBS) professor Clayton Christensen, Jerome Grossman, a doctor who also was the Director of Health Care Delivery Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, and Jason Hwang, another doctor and graduate of the MBA program at HBS, avoid the traps the plague most other solutions by taking a completely different perspective by looking at other industries where products and services offered were “so complicated and expensive that only people with a lot of money can afford them, and only people with a lot of expertise can provide or use them.” Yet convincingly through plenty of examples, it shows how telephones, computers, and airline travel moved from only accessible to those with the resources to become available and affordable to all.
The book tackles every aspect of health care and asks how will those in health care be disrupted and subsequently surpassed by other providers which deliver care that is more convenient, higher quality, and lower cost.
What will hospitals need to do as increasingly more surgical procedures are performed in high volume specialty hospitals?
How will doctor practices sustain themselves as new diagnostic tools and research makes the identification and treatment of problems more precise that nurse practitioners with clear protocols can deliver care previously required by physicians?
What mechanisms exist to streamline and integrate the various players of health care (doctors, hospitals, purchasers, insurers) so that all are focused on the benefit of wellness and outcomes of patient care rather than maximizing each of their own financials? (Hint: large employers will integrate health care and others will only purchase care delivered by integrated health care delivery systems).
What should medical schools do to prepare the next generation of doctors as current training is steeped in tradition, relevant a century ago, but woefully inadequate for the future?
How should pharmaceutical, medical device manufacturers, and diagnostic equipment makers position themselves for the inevitable changes that will affect them the same way previous leaders in other industries were overtaken by competitors and disruption?
How must the reimbursement system and regulators adapt to foster the innovation to make these changes occur?
If there is anything close to a crystal ball on what health care delivery will look like in the United States that will be increasingly affordable, higher quality, and accessible to all, this is it. They authors have convincingly demonstrated the likely path as well as indicated why a single payer nationalized system will stifle the innovation needed to improve our health care system. Those who wish to succeed in the new world of health care as predicted by this comprehensive and thoughtful analysis would be wise to consider this book.
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
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