The Funky Team, originally uploaded by jacq77
Yesterday, The Boston Globe ran an article on reknowned business strategist Michael Porter’s latest healthcare riffs. Porter, who is perhaps best known as a Harvard Business School professor and co-founder of Monitor Group, and lesser known as #1 on the Thinkers 50 list (beating out Bill Gates for the “world’s most influential business thinker” spot), has recently tackled our domestic healthcare crisis with his book Redefining Health Care. It’s been on my bookshelf for a couple months now awaiting a read, so I eagerly dove into the Globe article in which Porter highlights cooperative physician services in a “one-stop” atmosphere as an important value driver:
For example, a patient undergoing treatment for breast cancer typically has to make repeat appointments with different doctors and specialists on different days. Under his model, Porter said, the same patient should be able to walk into one building and meet various specialists on the same day, and those specialists should immediately consult with one another.
Then, he said, the hospital should closely follow its cases, tracking survival rates, recovery times, and patient satisfaction, among other things.
As an active healthcare services investor, Chrysalis has noticed the “one-stop” approach working in private retail settings. One of our portfolio companies, in fact, treats Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in clinics that employ a comprehensive set of services (and practitioners) under “one roof” and closely measure outcomes. The two-thirds of ADHD patients who are currently treated medically by their primary care physician often end up seeking ancillary treatment from nutritionists, academic coaches, psychologists, and the like. It’s inefficient, and often ineffective. I’m glad to hear Porter echo the sentiment.
For more on Redefining Health Care, the following offer great video coverage:
Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site.
Subscribe to these comments.
Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.
You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>