2021
Health Affairs
This Health Affairs Blog post describes some of the ways in which health systems, particularly larger systems, have effectively addressed COVID’s challenges. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20210308.673278/full/
The Health Care Blog
I should’ve been in Paris last week on vacation with my wife, instead I listened in to the Policies Techies VCS: What’s Next For Healthcare conference (I’ll explain why later). Matthew Holt and Jessica DaMassa did a magnificent job of assembling the Who’s Who of digital health tech to wax lyrical about what the new kids on the block […]
2020
The Health Care Blog
Back in the early 2000s I was on the board of the California Health Care Foundation and one day the German Minister of Health paid CHCF a visit as part of a learning tour of American healthcare. Mark Smith MD CHCF’s CEO invited me to join the meeting with the minister. She was a delightful […]
2018
Hospitals and Health Networks
How a health insurer became consumer-friendly
The Health Care Blog
Physicians are aggregating and not just by joining health systems
2017
Hospitals and Health Networks
An engaged business community in Rochester has guided the local health care organizations to join forces and lower costs.
Health systems are recognizing that social factors affect health. ProMedica shows how to turn that knowledge into strategy.
While health reform 2.0 could throw health systems a curve ball, most will stay the course.
Pursuing high-value care, through strategic growth and clinical integration, with increased attention to population health, remains the most sensible strategy.
What will happen in the nation’s most populous state if Obamacare is repealed?
Whether or not the new administration strikes a blow to the ACA, the post-industrial society is changing the rules of the game.
Leaders Edge
Q&A with author and healthcare futurist Ian Morrison
2016
Hospitals and Health Networks
Freestanding emergency rooms that cater to the wealthy and well insured should not become a metaphor for the health system more broadly.
U.S. health care is massively complex — let’s take some cues from tech companies, which have simplified many services for consumers.
Providing the nation’s low-income residents with money, jobs, housing, education and social services will improve their health.
The Seattle-based health care system can teach us all how to bring in fresh thinking from other industries.
In all the election fervor, don’t forget that health care is a major employment engine.
No matter who is running the country, hospitals can learn from what we know about the connection between coverage, affordable care and health outcomes.
The Health Care Blog
Reality is weirder than parody
Reminder Again. This interview is fake. Donald Trump is real. And his support is growing.
This interview is fake. Donald Trump is real. Think about it.
2015
Hospitals and Health Networks
Watch for more states consolidating their purchasing power and coordinating with private payers in payment reform.
Health system leaders haven’t figured out which vision they want to pursue now that reimbursement is changing.
Covered California may provide a vision of the future, no matter who is running the country.
Everyone is working hard to improve the healthcare system, but is the frontline running out of gas?
Many U.S. patients endure pointless treatments because their doctors don’t know how to talk about death. But that’s changing as hospice and palliative care are gaining ground.
When you hear the word “empowerment,” it’s code for “You’re on your own, pal.”
2014
Hospitals and Health Networks
Being on your own may not be the best answer
The health system needs to reach high performance as soon as possible. Here’s why.
Healthcare delivery has to truly innovate on a massive scale for higher performance
Getting into the risk business is daunting, but health care leaders can use referral management to build financial reserves.
Wealth and health care in Dubai and the United States and what Pete Seeger would have said about it.
The ACA changes everything. The good news is if you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep it.
2013
Hospitals and Health Networks
Always thought to be on the edge, AMCs face real financial threats from health care reform. But new models, like the one at Stanford, offer promise.
While poor data, varying demographics and inadequate CMS resources, among other factors, contributed to more than a quarter of the ACO pioneers’ either quitting the program or turning back from pioneer status, we can learn from their experience.
The nation’s most populous state is garnering attention because of its economy, its diversity, its health insurance exchange and its unique delivery system.
It looks like growth in health care costs is ebbing, but it’s not clear the slowdown is here to stay.
Now that Obamacare is for real, what might reality look like?
A few examples of the fallout from Obamacare: Even the most enthusiastic states are scrambling to set up exchanges; small employers and those of low-wage workers may drop coverage.
2012
Hospitals and Health Networks
From numbers that don’t add up to faulty assumptions about patient behavior, many in health care believe in the impossible.
To ensure your system will work under a new payment model, develop partnerships with other providers and start with your employees.
Big Data and New Thinking can transform care of heavy users
Elements of the future unfold at different rates of change
Hospitals in rural areas face different challenges, and opportunities, than those in cities.
Hospitals and Health Systems Online
Complexity, confusion and lack of consequences are keeping patients from making better decisions about their health and their health care.
2011
Hospitals and Health Networks
The un-cola of accountable care may have a big impact on providers.
The surge may be coming. Are you prepared?
The future of Medicare is the central issue of our time.
There is huge geographic variation in the way states are implementing health reform.
Can we come together on healthcare?
We have a great idea, a lot of momentum and no clue what might happen next.
The Health Care Blog
The most bureaucratic healthcare system in the world
2010
Hospitals and Health Networks
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?
We need a new math for health care. The old math isn’t working.
Hospitals have to pick their Tipping Point. And then Act.
Powerful forces will expand public funding of health care no matter what.
We can learn from Canada and other countries about care, not just coverage.
How to have the best health and health care in the world.
The Health Care Blog
“I want your Ugly. I want your Disease / I want your Everything, as long as it’s Free.”
2009
Hospitals and Health Networks
How can there be a healthcare debate when evidence doesn’t matter?
The Ponzi artist and our health care system have more in common than we’d like to admit.
Health care species are perfectly evolved for their environment.
The Health Care Blog
To honor the 40th Anniversary of Monty Python’s Flying Circus’s debut, Congress and the Administration have entered the silly season where final policy is turned into law.
2008
Hospitals and Health Networks
Understand that quarters matter.
What Explanation? What Benefits?
We have got to get over this freedom thing and stop cheating.
Progress can be made, one care process at a time.
We can cover the uninsured, but can we contain costs?
Superb inputs don’t necessarily create brilliant outcomes.
2007
Hospitals and Health Networks
Why physicians are so unhappy, and what we can do about it.
Innovations in the heartland are worth a closer look.
Look “down under” for health care solutions.
We need to put a halt to all the new technologies, political prattle and process improvement plans and start anew with health care.
Maybe our focus on insurance is wrong.
In the deli that is health care, we all deserve the special
Managed Care Outlook
Conversations on the Changing Face of Managed Care: Insights from the 2006-2007 Podcast Series
2006
American Hospital Association's Futurescan
Balancing Consumerism and Community for a Sustainable Future
Hospitals and Health Systems Online
We have a first class healthcare system. It works pretty well for people in first class but if you are in coach you might not be so happy.
Life is filled with trade-offs, and health care is no exception.
Here are five books I wish I had written.
Don’t let complexity be an excuse for inadequate care.
Pay attention to hospital construction as well as IT
Change happens for different reasons and in different ways
2002-2004
Health Forum Journal
Be careful, or the hospital as we know it may disappear.
Be careful, or the hospital as we know it may disappear.
Consumer responsibility may force some improvements in health care, but the less sophisticated users will be left behind.
I was always taught that America spends too much on healthcare and we could reallocate resources to cover the uninsured, increase wellness and health promotion activities, and improve the quality of clinical care. That may well be true, but, as we have found out over the last thirty years it is simply impossible to achieve […]
We need to distinguish between the future that’s arrived and the future that may never come.
Each year it becomes more imperative that health care leaders heed the old cliché and set an example for the rest of the organization.
Hospitals and Health Systems Online
Tax cuts have limited our nation’s ability to provide insurance to the indigent, cover medications for the elderly and keep foundering health systems afloat.
We need to harness the positive energy surrounding the electronic medical record but curb our enthusiasm for it at the same time.
Rising consumer costs, retiring baby boomers and Medicare reform will push health care to center stage in 2008.
We rely on physicians to choose our medicine the way canines depend on us to buy their food.
With the passage of the Wholly Inadequate Prescription Drug Benefit for Seniors (WIPDBS) and the capture of Saddam Hussein, George Bush should be a shoo in for re-election unless the economy reverses its apparent recovery. Bush and his advisors have taken the healthcare issue away from the Democrats while apparently rewarding their supporters in the […]
Price is a signal, be careful what you wish for.
Looking Ahead Columns from the Health Forum Journal
Techno-futurists are full of it. Technology doesn’t cause anything. It amplifies, distorts, leverages, and attenuates but it does not determine the direction of things. It neither creates flattened organizations nor hierarchical ones. It is neither the cause of centralization nor decentralization. Technology, in general and, information technology in particular, is neutral in both a geographic […]
2000-2001
Aetna's Annual Report 2000: What Leaders Must Do
The future of healthcare is always clear to futurists: it will be different because of aging and technology. We have been saying this for a long time. Yet if you look at American healthcare from 30,000 feet what do you see? The over 65 population today accounts for only 13% of the population, up from […]
Annals of Internal Medicine
The Future of Physicians’ Time
British Medical Journal
Time to stop running faster and redesign health care.
Looking Ahead Columns from the Health Forum Journal
To redesign health care quickly enough to care for aging boomers, we must lead a stubborn beast across a wide chasm.
No matter how smart, well informed, and empowered I may be, when I come in contact with the health care system I am frightened, anxious, and in pain.
In most markets, and most industries, organizations are accountable to their customers. If you make a product that doesn’t work or doesn’t meet customer needs in some other way, then you won’t make money and your shareholders will be unhappy. The magic of market forces makes firms accountable. But markets fail in healthcare. (By the […]
We have a Bush in the White House. Cheney, Powell and Condy Rice are bombing Iraq. And, health premiums are going up at double-digit rates. It’s 1990 all over again. 1990 was the beginning of big health reform. The recession pushed corporate America over the edge and healthcare became a CFO issue. Back then, the […]
Health care is complex. It is full of professions, guilds, unions, and community stakeholders, all of which make leadership more difficult. How do you lead in such an environment? I offer, with some humility, my five pillars of leadership: 1. Distinguish between managing and leading. This is by no means an original thought, but it […]
E-Health, Baby. If Austin Powers was in the healthcare forecasting business, that would have been his clarion cry as the millennium dawned. The IPOs came fast and furious, anythinghealth.com was hot in the market, and the Industry Standard-the dot.com establishment trade magazine-declared breathlessly that “Net entrepreneurs are drooling over the prospect of fixing the nation’s […]
1990s
British Medical Journal
Next week the leaders of British doctors will meet to consider the future of medicine. The BMA, the General Medical Council, the royal colleges, and the departments of health will all be represented. This is the first time that these groups have met at such a summit conference since the Christchurch conference of 1961. That […]
Health Affairs
There is widespread recognition that U.S. health care costs are out of line with those of the rest of the world and acceptance in most quarters that this is hurting someone-if not America’s competitive position, then at least the U.S. workers who are having to give up wages (and probably a few jobs).
Many experts and political figures contend that the Clinton administration’s proposed health care reform plan could be vastly improved if it resembled more closely the national health plans found in Canada and Germany.
Amid growing dissatisfaction with its health care system, the United States is increasingly looking abroad for insights into health system reform.