The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care

A groundbreaking prescription for health care reform--from a legendary leader in innovation . . .

Our health care system is in critical condition. Each year, fewer Americans can afford it, fewer businesses can provide it, and fewer government programs can promise it for future generations.

We need a cure, and we need it now.

Harvard Business School’s Clayton M. Christensen—whose bestselling The Innovator’s Dilemma revolutionized the business world—presents The Innovator’s Prescription, a comprehensive analysis of the strategies that will improve health care and make it affordable.

Christensen applies the principles of disruptive innovation to the broken health care system with two pioneers in the field—Dr. Jerome Grossman and Dr. Jason Hwang. Together, they examine a range of symptoms and offer proven solutions.

YOU’LL DISCOVER HOW

“Precision medicine” reduces costs and makes good on the promise of personalized care
Disruptive business models improve quality, accessibility, and affordability by changing the way hospitals and doctors work
Patient networks enable better treatment of chronic diseases
Employers can change the roles they play in health care to compete effectively in the era of globalization
Insurance and regulatory reforms stimulate disruption in health care

Customer Reviews:

What rather than who

By William Whipple III - February 18, 2009

It is a commonplace that the U.S. healthcare system is broken, but the discussion often degenerates into a debate about who is responsible. This book takes a different approach, focusing on what is wrong with the healthcare system and needs to change so it can work better.

The proposed solution is to discard the current fee for healthcare service model, in which healthcare providers are systematically paid to treat illness without recompense for fostering welfare, and create a three-track system:

(1) Fee for service would continue to apply to diagnostic services, where - due to the nature of the patient's condition and the state of medical knowledge - there is a high need for intuitive investigation versus results-based treatment for conditions that are well understood. (The process described brings to mind episodes of House, a TV show in which a brilliant but irascible doctor challenges a team of colleagues to find the problem before the patient dies.)... read more

An Industry Insider's Review of Christensen's Prescription for a Cure

By Thomas M. Loarie - February 2, 2009

I have been an active participant in healthcare developing and commercializing over twenty medical technologies across nine medical specialties since the 1970's. I have also lectured on the medical industry as an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Creighton University Medical Center and as a guest lecturer at Anderson School of Management (UCLA), Haas School of Business (University of California), and Graziadio Business School (Pepperdine University), and spent significant time in the 1990's on FDA reform.

I have been privileged to have had a front-row seat observing the major changes that have shaped today's healthcare system - industry consolidation for both the supplier (pharma, med-tech, and diagnostic) and delivery (hospital, clinics, physician practice) segments; the move from unregulated fee-for-service to regulated fee-for-service; the growth of medical malpractice and its impact on the cost of healthcare; the use and misuse of technology; the draconian regulatory... read more

Brilliant. Far and away the best book on health care reform.

By Davis Liu - February 18, 2009

The decade worth of research spent understanding, studying, and ultimately offering solutions to make the health care system more accessible, higher quality, and affordable is clear. Unlike other books, the authors avoid the traps the plague most other solutions by taking a completely different perspective by looking at other industries where products and services offered were "so complicated and expensive that only people with a lot of money can afford them, and only people with a lot of expertise can provide or use them." Yet convincingly through plenty of examples, it shows how telephones, computers, and airline travel moved from only accessible to those with the resources to become available and affordable to all.

The book tackles every aspect of health care and asks how will those in health care be disrupted and subsequently surpassed by other providers which deliver care that is more convenient, higher quality, and lower cost.

What will hospitals need to... read more