Imagine What If

Here’s the goal:
To change healthcare as quickly as possible,
from the inside out,
so that it works for everyone.

We have reached a hinge point.
We finally have the tools.
We can ask the right questions.
It can be done.

It can be done today
- and we don't have to wait for the leaders to lead. Once we understand the problem, we can do something from wherever we stand - in the industry or outside it, as clinicians, as executives, as patients and families, as voters and consumers, as investors, as legislators or regulators.

Recent articles

What must be done:
The 14 things that hospitals must do today to make healthcare better faster cheaper.

The Curse of Capitalism
Observers on the right and the left agree: The attempt to build the Next Healthcare faces a much bigger obstacle than partisan politics.

What people say

Flower’s discussion of potential changes in the healthcare arena is thought-provoking as well as eye-opening, and should easily inspire leaders of an executive level.

- Ed Colloff, M.D., Stanford Medical Center

What I can’t get out of my mind is the impact these changes to health care are going to have to other aspects of our lives.... Your presentation contained a lot of good information at one time.

- Bill Bishop,
Mission St. Joseph’s, Asheville NC

His research and subject knowledge are without challenge. He’s done his homework and the audience, even doctors, know it.

- Jerry Lewis, Banner Healthcare, Greeley CO

Joe Flower's Publications

Books

Encyclopedia of Computers and Computer History (co-author, 2000)

China’s Futures (co-author, 2000)

Japan’s Futures, Global Business Network, 1998 (Executive Editor)

Leading Change: A Key Challenge for Board-Management Teams - White Paper #32, The Governance Institute, 1998

Best Practices in Collaboration to Improve Health: Creating Community Jazz, (a principal co-author), The Healthcare Forum and the California Wellness Foundation, 1996

Prince of the Magic Kingdom: Michael Eisner and the Re-Making of Disney (1991, North America; 1992, France; 1993 North America, paperback)

Age Wave (1989, co-author)

Articles

Regular columns in The Journal of the American College of Physician Executives, 1996-Present

Regular columns in Hospitals and Health Networks Online, Health Forum, American Hospital Association, 2004 - Present

“Knowledge Review: Does Healthcare Have A Future?” Joe Flower and David Knott, Strategy + Business, No 46, Spring 2007

“Five-Star Hospitals,” Strategy + Business, No 42, Spring 2006

“Cardiology: The Next Fifty Years,” Journal of the American College of Cardiology, March 2000

“The Future of Healthcare: Forces and Scenarios,” The 21st Century Healthcare Leader, Emory University School of Medicine, Center for Healthcare Leadership/Jossey Bass, 1998

“A Tool Kit for Building A Healthy City,” National Civic Review, Vol. 87 #4, Winter 1998

“Beyond Economics: Healthy Communities and Healthy Economies,” National Civic Review, Vol. 86 #1, Spring 1997

“The Future of Healthcare,” The Encyclopedia of the Future, Macmillan and Company, 1996.

Three healthcare “compendia,” published by the Healthcare Forum Journal

Scores of articles in such professional journals as:

• Government
• The Healthcare Forum Journal
• the Journal of Strategic Performance Measurement
• the National Bar Association Journal
• The National Civic Review
• Physician Executive
• Obra (Madrid)
• Organisationsentwicklung (Basel)
• Strategies for Excellence in Healthcare

Hundreds of articles in popular periodicals in the United States and around the world, including

• Esquire
• GQ
• Islands
• the Los Angeles Times
• M
• New Age
• New Scientist
• the New York Times
• Playboy
• Reader’s Digest
• Sport
• Travel and Leisure
• Utne Reader
• Whole Earth Review
• Wired