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.

“Must Read” Classic Report

The Role of the Physical Environment in the Hospital of the 21st Century:

A Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity

From Roger Ulrich, Craig Zimring and the Center for Health Design, truly the one “must-read” document for anyone involved in planning a healthcare facility.

“Must Read” Classic Interviews by Joe Flower

Jim Collins:

Good to Great

John Seely Brown:

We Participate, Therefore We Are

Two must-reads for anyone running an organization. Collins shows how a run-of-the-mill organization becomes a truly great one. Brown shows how organizations learn, and how we can get out of the way.

Smart Bomb?

. . . or dumb bomb?

By Joe Flower

From Hospitals and Health Networks Online, November 13, 2007

Coming political turmoil has grave implications for the future of U.S. health care, especially providers.

The political question for health care now isn’t so much whether some kind of major reform will be passed in 2009 or 2010, but the flavor it will have. Those considerations divide along two lines, one well-discussed and obvious, the other not so well-discussed but actually of greater importance. (Download the full article on health care reform)

BioTech: Is It Worth The Risk?

Two recent points of view

By Joe Flower

From strategy + business, Winter 2007

Some thirty years into the biotech revolution we are finally beginning to hear sound, careful analyses asking deep questions about the value and implications of this astonishing new field. Is it a great way to make money, to extend life, to save the planet? Or is it wildly irresponsible, this century’s snake oil, the new South Sea bubble? The magical promise of biotech has seemingly kept us from taking these questions seriously, and left the field open to propagandists on both sides. (Download the full article on biotech)

Recent articles

Five-Star Hospitals:
Treating patients like customers

Humans Need Not Apply
Networked automation and the future of healthcare

Be Prepared
To adapt quickly

Far-Reaching Developments
The core meaning of offshoring is shifting, and that shift is about to penetrate health care on a FedEx timetable.

Market Shifts
New treatments and hospitals’ attempts to cut inventory costs will cut into the medical device industry.

The Systems Approach
Tough new questions reshape the health IT sales arena

The 16 Challenges
Information technology’s benefits come at a price