Healthcare Decisions

I will get this roughly right, but I was talking with a non-healthcare person a few days ago.  He has built several successful companies and was studying the healthcare industry.  He described healthcare decision making as “passively aggressive, supposedly consensus driven”. 

As anyone in the industry knows, it is not always a logical process given all the different constituents, the embedded processes, the historical momentum, the confusing data, and many different frameworks (e.g., clinical versus financial).

It made me think of a quote by  who wrote several books on great companies.

“No major decision that we’ve studied was ever taken at a point of unanimous agreement.”

I agree.  Companies can’t focus on consensus.  They need to focus on open debate and then come to a decision which the company rallies around.