The healthcare paradox
The healthcare paradox is reaching crisis proportions. While many Americans benefit from the best health care in the world many others suffer from limited access, poor quality and insufficient coverage.

The facts:

• Access is threatened
• Quality is in jeopardy
• Costs are accelerating
• The number of uninsured is climbing.

Healthcare delivery, affordability, regulation and scope will all change. The convergence of dynamics such as Medicare/Medicaid reform, Health Information Technology uptake, aging Baby Boomers, emerging stakeholders, the declining decision power of physicians, the escalating influence of payors, new mandates for outcomes and Disease Management, and the need for total health care system improvements vs. product-centric solutions are rapidly unraveling baseline business assumptions. Market leaders will react, but simply monitoring individual forces and creating contingency plans around each is neither practical nor sensible.

The shape of change for suppliers
Change will be shaped by the convergence of multiple forces and events. The better this convergence and its consequences are understood, the better the chance to formulate anticipative leadership plans for success.

Healthcare manufacturers are increasingly drawn into reform initiatives and subjected to laser-sharp scrutiny and blame. The industry is challenged on several fronts by stakeholders whose interests differ — and often conflict. One result is a growing negative reputation for self-promotion at the expense of patients and greed in the face of escalating healthcare costs. Industries risk becoming destabilized and fractionated by individual acts of response to isolated “crisis events”. This is a defining moment demanding a cohesive, aligned and creative stance throughout each organization and the industry as a whole.

Science alone, product feature/benefit platforms and SOV will no longer guarantee success. New and substantive capabilities/offerings will be needed to support meaningful competitive value and to avoid a narrow “cost/price” dialogue. Emerging customer decision priorities are the new realities of the healthcare industry challenge. Meeting this new challenge means rewriting many of the fundamentals.

Moment of decision
Facts about the future are necessarily limited and unreliable. That means much decision-making is ultimately based on experience and intuition. But the past and present experience of individuals and companies are losing relevance within a fundamentally new industry environment. This is precisely why convention must be challenged. Scenario learning and parallel planning is critically important.

Over the next few years current strategies, strengths and core competencies may well diminish in importance or cease to apply. New thinking and a deliberate challenge to convention are critical to the development of true leadership plans for companies and organizations, their core focus and their key functions. The Atlantis Group’s unique tools and processes help management foster that new thinking and challenge convention in a way that is practical, productive and actionable.