Redefining Health Care: Creating Positive-Sum Competition to Deliver Value
by Michael E. Porter and Elizabeth Teisberg

The U.S. health care system is in crisis. At stake are the quality of care for millions of Americans and the financial well-being of individuals and employers squeezed by skyrocketing premiums--not to mention the stability of state and federal government budgets.

In Redefining Health Care, internationally renowned strategy expert Michael E. Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg reveal the underlying--and largely overlooked--causes of the problem and provide a powerful prescription for change. The authors argue that participants in the health care system have competed to shift costs, accumulate bargaining power, and restrict services, rather than create value for patients. This zero-sum competition takes place at the wrong level--among health plans, networks, and hospitals--rather than where it matters most--in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific health conditions.

Redefining Health Care lays out a breakthrough framework for redefining health care competition based on patient value. With specific recommendations for hospitals, doctors, health plans, employers, and policy makers, this book shows how to move to a positive-sum competition that will unleash stunning improvements in quality and efficiency.

Based at the Harvard Business School, the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness is dedicated to the study of competition and its implications for company strategy; the competitiveness of nations, regions, and cities; and the relationship between competition and society. The Institute seeks to develop new theory, assemble bodies of data to test and apply the theory, and disseminate its ideas widely to scholars and practitioners in business, government, and non-governmental organizations such as universities, economic development organizations, and foundations. The Institute is led by Michael E. Porter. The Institute is dedicated to deepening, extending, and disseminating the body of research that Professor Porter has pioneered over the last two decades.

"We in healthcare are living in the midst of a substantial downturn of trust-you might even call it a trust famine...But there are solutions. Indeed, as real as the crisis is, so too is the opportunity," says Dr. David Shore in his new book, The Trust Prescription for Healthcare: Building Your Reputation with Consumers. Dean Shore is the founding director of the Harvard School of Public Health Trust Initiative. The Initiative has helped thousands of healthcare professionals enhance trust in their organizations. Dr. Shore's book draws heavily on his work with the Initiative and his experience helping healthcare organizations.

Shore's hard-hitting approach underscores the vital role that trust plays in healthcare delivery. He writes, "You are a surgery patient. You have been stripped naked and stuck with needles. The people in charge are strangers...yet they are about to knock you unconscious and cut open your body. How important is it that you trust the hospital and the people who work there?" The book not only increases awareness of the trust crisis but proposes solutions as well.

Shore explains how trusted organizations attract consumers, retain the best professionals, and appeal to investors. Shore makes a compelling argument for why building trust is at once good medicine, good business, and great leadership. Click here to order.

The Business of Healthcare Innovation, edited by Lawton Robert Burns, Ph.D., MBA, the James Joo-Jin Kim Professor, and Professor of Health Care Systems, Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, provides a detailed overview of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, genomics/proteomics, medical device and information technology sectors.

It analyzes the market structures of these sectors as well as the business models and corporate strategies of firms operating within them. Most importantly, the book describes the growing convergence between these sectors and the need for executives in one sector to increasingly draw upon trends in the others. It will be essential reading for students and researchers in the field of health management, and of great interest to strategy scholars, industry practitioners and management consultants. Click here to order.

EHR Implementation: A Step by Step Guide for the Medical Practice, published by AMA Press, offers practice guidance on EHR evaluation, selection, negotiation, and purchase, then presents tips from early adopters on what worked and how they fixed what didn't work. Loaded with workflow charts, graphs, vendor screen shots, RFP, vendor scorecard, training and implementation support. Click here to order.

The Truth about Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It by Marcia Angell, MD, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). According to Dr. Angell the pharmaceutical industry is fraught with corruption and doing a disservice to customers, the federal government, and to the medical establishment itself. Click here to order.

Digital Medicine: Implications for Healthcare Leaders by Jeff Goldsmith, PhD. This book provides a panoramic view of information technology innovation in healthcare, and more audaciously, a vision of how the U.S. health system will look and feel when healthcare practitioners have learned to use these powerful new tools. Click here to order.

Escape Fire: Designs for the Future of Health Care Essays by Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, President and Chief Executive Officer Institute for Health Improvement. Click here to order.

Medicine, Science, and Merck by P. Roy Vagelos, MD, Retired Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Merck & Co., and Louis Galambos, Ph.D. Click here to order.