Healthcare at a Turning Point : A Roadmap for Change

This book provides a market-based approach to addressing the ''ills'' of the current healthcare system. To provide context, it briefly highlights and puts in perspective the historical events that led to the current challenges. It presents a clear vision of a viable, market-based healthcare system that produces better health outcomes at lower costs and discusses recommendations to realize that vision for the major industry sectors impacted by the healthcare debate. This book provides the reader with concrete recommendation for next steps for each sector of the healthcare industry and includes case studies to illustrate their point.

If the furious debate around the state of healthcare in the US has led to any consensus, it’s that the system should be delivering better quality for less cost than it does. The truth is that our healthcare system is a sprawling mix of competing interests in which those of the patient are valued least. Too much discussion has devolved to simplistic scapegoating, and too few comprehensive, constructive solutions have been offered. It’s time for a fresh vision.

In straightforward language, Healthcare at a Turning Point: A Roadmap for Change outlines a new market-based business model that aligns industry financing mechanisms with the goals of prevention, improved quality, and reduced costs. Drawing on more than 25 years of cross-industry consulting experience, the authors:

• Articulate a market-based vision of the industry
• Examine past efforts to reduce costs, their failures and their unanticipated consequences
• Spotlight perverse incentives that distort the way the healthcare system operates and make it less than it could be
• Present concrete recommendations for change within the healthcare delivery, insurance, pharmaceutical, device and diagnostics sectors
• Explain the changes that employers, consumers and policy makers can make to create a more customer-responsive system that delivers more value

For all the uncertainty in the current environment, there is also a rare opportunity to fundamentally redefine who wins in this market. Healthcare at a Turning Point provides guidance to executives ready for that contest as well as a roadmap for change.