Many books review in painful detail the problems with the U.S. healthcare system, but few suggest incremental, easily implemented, and realistic solutions. It is doubtful that radically changing a $4 trillion, 19% of GDP health system will happen. Just consider how difficult and long it took to pass the Affordable Care Act.
It is shortsighted to focus solely on the U.S. healthcare system and think our challenges are unique. Consider the U.K. and its government-run system. The NHS is in crisis suffering from shortages of physicians, nurses, therapists, and clerks. Waiting lists for elective surgeries are months long, and ambulance response times have worsened. With a smaller tax base and shrinking labor pools, most developed countries wonder how they will fund healthcare services for seniors and find enough clinicians to care for them.
The greatest challenge in addressing these problems is not creating valuable solutions but implementing them. Change management, encouraging, cajoling, and leading staff to perform their tasks with different processes and workflows, is the key to improving healthcare delivery. In my book Navigating the Code: How Revolutionary Technology Transforms the Patient-Physician Journey, I reveal how change management coupled with information technology tools can transform patient care and the patient experience. And my suggestions are different from those that are U.S.-centric. Rather than focus on cost, I emphasize value obtained from resources expended. This approach opens my solutions to both government and privately funded healthcare systems.
In researching my book, I interviewed 18 experts from around the world, including colleagues from the U.K., Brazil, Singapore, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. In my future posts, I will share key concepts from my book that I hope will be useful for you in your work.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts, so please submit your comments in the posts. Thanks for your time today. #healthcare #strategy #health
