Changing News Archive - May, 2009
Nasty or Nice: How Do You Grow Market Share? -- May 20, 2009
HealthLeaders editorial about the combative attitude in the market when it comes to marketing activities of late.
The Case for Competition -- May 1, 2009
For the amount we are currently spending on health care in the United States (about $2.4 trillion a year, 16.6 percent of the GDP), it would be possible to provide quality health care for all—if organized rationally. The problem? The US health care system is uncoordinated, rife with perverse economic incentives, and lacking in management systems that promote quality and efficiency. Frequently, health care providers respond to proposed cost-reducing innovations by claiming they will cause providers to lose revenue—which is often true. The answer? Competition. Not dog-eat-dog, race-to-the-bottom, lowest-common-denominator competition but rather the kind of competition that forces doctors and providers to benchmark what they are doing against what others are doing, and continuously improve. Value for money must be considered as valid for health care as it is for anything else.
When Cost and Culture Collide -- May 1, 2009
Michael Young was brought in as chief executive officer of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta to work a similar turnaround that he accomplished with Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, NY—a story I wrote back in 2006.
Cutting the outrageous deficits the troubled public hospital has been running for years was probably number one on his list of things to do. Wringing greater support from the communities that send their indigent and charity care patients to Grady was probably item number two. But changing the culture that allowed Grady to slip so far has to be third on his list.
