The Healthcare conundrum to avoid...

When I was last at Houston Texas, I could not help but be amazed by the medical enterprise at an entire district known as Texas Medical Centre. Brand name hospitals and specialist centres are there and the hotel where I stayed was practically filled with patients. Hotels run shuttle bus services to and from hospitals for patients and their next-of-kin.

It is in this setting that this new BBC article reports the Healthcare conundrum, ie more spending per patient in Texas is not translated into better patient outcome, and that the "business" of healthcare is inducing unnecessary demand for services that patients do not need.

Prof Christensen is right. Doing more of what we currently have in healthcare cannot help. We need to disrupt the way healthcare is being provided through coherent solution shops, value-added Process (VAP) clinics for illnesses that are already well understood and where precision/ empirical medicine may be practiced; and facilitated networks (disease management plans) where providers are rewarded to keep patients well, and patients are incentivised to comply with their therapy.