Bohmer is a physician and faculty member of the Harvard Business School who suggests that the key to designing a better health care system in the United States is through the basic strategy of "applying the best available medical knowledge to solve patients' health problems." Aimed at health care professionals and organizations, this book analyzes the misalignment between health issues and the processes used to treat them and emphasizes the need to employ clinical research in a more effect manner. The author describes six organizational skills that will help health care companies solve health problems, employ best practices and embed this knowledge in the next generation of practitioners. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Today's health-care providers face growing criticism from policy makers and patients alike. As costs continue to spiral upward and concerns about quality of care escalate, the debate has focused on how to finance health care. Yet funding solutions can't address the underlying questions: Why have costs risen in the first place? And how can we improve the quality and affordability of care? In Designing Care, Harvard Business School professor Richard Bohmer argues that these fundamental questions must be answered. A medical doctor himself, Bohmer explains that health-care professionals are tasked with providing two very different types of care—sequential and iterative. With sequential care, a patient can be quickly diagnosed and given predictable, reliable, and low-cost care. But in the case of iterative care, a patient's condition is unknown, and tremendous resources may be required for diagnosis and treatment, often with uncertain outcomes. Bohmer shows that to reduce costs and manage care effectively, sequential and iterative care situations require different management systems. Through stories and cases drawn from years in the field, he reveals how health-care providers can successfully manage both modes. To do so, they must reevaluate traditional roles and embrace continuous learning across the organization. The benefits of this operational redesign? The predictable, responsive, and lower-cost care today's health-care leaders—and patients—seek.
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