Changing Health Care

A recent editorial in the NEJM (6/25/98) noted, "An old management-consulting adage reads: 'Good, fast, cheap: pick any two.' In health care, the contemporary equivalent seems to be: 'Quality, accessibility, affordability: have all three.'" In this book Jennings, et al provide a comprehensive and detailed vision as to how these three seemingly conflicting ambitions can be simultaneously achieved. A number of modalities to achieve this, including integrating patient/consumer empowerment and responsiveness, and the intelligent implementation of information technology are described and elucidated by example. This book better than any single source I've found provides a coherent strategy for the evolution of health care enterprises. This may become the Rosette Stone to the successful metamorphosis of the US health care system.

"Few health care organizations will survive or succeed without undergoing transformation," said Ken Jennings, co-author of Changing Health Care and a partner in Andersen Consulting's Healthcare practice. "They are beginning to realize that what kept them going in the past will not necessarily serve them well in the future." Andersen Consulting authors Jennings, Kurt Miller and Sharyn Materna collectively have more than 50 years of experience helping hundreds of clients in health care and related industries. Changing Health Care forecasts that successful organizations will transcend today's competition on cost and, instead, gain marketshare by customizing health care services to the individual. A "New Breed of Consumer" Savvy new consumers are assuming greater responsibility for their own care, arming themselves with previously restricted information and redefining the very nature of health care services, said Kurt Miller, co-author of Changing Health Care and a partner in Andersen