Healthcare As A Non-Profit Industry

I am a big believer in the fact that our healthcare system needs to be more focused on outcomes, but I am not ready to jump on the bandwagon of making healthcare a non-profit industry. I had to throw in my comments on one of the entries on The Health Care Blog to talk about this.

A couple of the key points that I think are worth repeating are:

We need to address healthcare as a profession. We are facing a shortage of PCPs, RNs, and RPhs over the next decade.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to see more business school people getting into healthcare. This new perspective can only help. It doesn’t mean that the industry will become less health focused.

I think ROI is an important metric even in healthcare. The reality is we don’t have good data to look at ROI in any holistic way in healthcare. We don’t know outcomes. We don’t know the impact of outcomes on absenteeism and other metrics. We don’t have an activity-based costing system to understand the costs of treatment.

The author says that “by law, a corporation’s first obligation is to make a profit for its shareholders. Its customers come second.” I am not sure that A makes B true. There is lots of proof out there in the business world that shows that a focus on customers sometimes at the short-term expense of profits will drive a sustainable business model.

I think we just need a different system with passionate leadership (from whatever background) who understand the long-term management model and are committed to impacting outcomes through financially aligned incentives. This likely may need to be a combination of public and private especially when you realize that 1% of the population drives 35% of the cost meaning that a small focus can make a big difference.