The New Leadership Model for Healthcare

The healthcare market has so much opportunity for positive change—but it is moving too slowly, at an enormous cost to all of us. It’s not that there isn’t leadership. We have seen dozens of examples of admirable leaders bringing about significant change, and it’s clear that the actions of individuals can have significant impact. But so far, that impact has been restricted to specific geographies or business models. We need more to truly transform the market.

Today’s leaders need to not just ignite a revolution but sustain it in a way that ultimately tips the market to value. This means they must find a way to bridge the gaps between sickness and wellness, between insurance risk and care delivery, and between the benefits-based economy and the direct consumer spend economy. And they’ll need to accomplish that in the face of constant discontinuous change and rapid innovation cycles.

One of the big obstacles is that fee-for-service medicine is still very profitable for healthcare companies. It’s not sustainable though. But as long as employers and Medicare keep funding the current way of doing business, it is hard for payers and providers to walk away from it. As a result, they’re slow to change, and that means that the capital markets are slow to invest adequately in innovators trying to change their organizations.

The problems and opportunities of healthcare are bigger—far bigger—than your organization. The healthcare market itself is profoundly dysfunctional; it erodes value rather than creating it by focusing on sickness instead of prevention, and on volume of care instead of cost, quality, and outcomes. To truly change healthcare’s basis of competition—and unleash enormous pent-up value—leaders have to learn to think beyond their own four walls and devote some of their attention to the broader industry.