Big Picture Healthcare Articles

Cost control is a single metric, which is appropriate, but insufficient for managing the complexity of Healthcare Management issues alone.

Patient outcomes, employer satisfaction, employee development and motivation, and long-term innovation along with financials will drive long-term success (and profitability) of service offerings.

Increasingly sophisticated consumers are interested in creating health, not just in treating disease. They embrace acupuncture, chiropractic, massage and nutrition. They do yoga, T'ai Chi and Pilates. They understand that the conventional healthcare system has had mixed results, and they are not opposed to exploring to find the best alternatives for their needs.

Market restriction and professional protection will be seen in a light similar to Enron and WorldCom executive decisions when it comes to light that the status quo was supported when better alternatives were known and access denied. Healthcare executives will be held accountable. Wise executives will start to build their own integrity now.

Drugs that profitably treat symptoms of chronic disease, yet cause long-term consequences that damage health will be seen in the same light as addictive tobacco. Juries will be sympathetic, since MDs and pharmaceutical companies whose conflict of interest was clear controlled the system. Alternative therapies which were discouraged, discredited or banned to protect the status quo and its profits, will be embraced, past actions mourned.

Educated consumers will reject genetically engineered, and hormone and antibiotic laden products resulting from successful pharmaceutical and biotech sales to agribusiness. As the public learns more about food additives and other practices of the food industry, educated consumers will reject these products as well.

Governments will react slowly, but will catch on when the cost of treating product-induced diseases rises and they find themselves the payer of last resort.

New strategic thinking is required at all levels of US Healthcare organizations. New paradigms can be profitable, and have strong consumer outcomes. Collaboration between stakeholders will hold the greatest opportunity in a system with so much stakeholder complexity.

Companies who choose to be trailblazers in this strategic thinking and invest in products and services to match these trends will have initial industry resistance, but will ultimately reap the rewards (huge profits and customer loyalty) from the risks they take early on (now). These companies many not be conventional healthcare or pharmaceutical providers, but may offer alternative or complimentary approaches to nutrition, fitness, energy and health.

Scientific innovations in physics and energetic medicine promise powerful, profitable approaches with decreased side effects, complimentary to current protocols. These will provide needed salve to healthcare costs along with cost effective natural "alternative" and eastern approaches.

Management, leadership experts and consultants from outside of the industry will prove to be of critical importance for healthcare success. Their thinking will be needed to break entrenched paradigms and move to the next phase of healthcare excellence.