Market-driven Health Care: Who Wins, Who Loses In The Transforation Of America's Largest Service Industry [Hardcover]

Regina Herzlinger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 1997

What happens when the demanding consumers who nearly brought the U.S. automobile industry to its knees focus the same kinds of pressure on the industry that represents one-seventh of the U.S. economy—health care? The health organizations that combine quality, convenience, information, choices, and lower costs will be the winners in this revolution. Regina Herzlinger, chaired professor at the Harvard Business School, distills the facts from the noise surrounding the one industry whose measures of success are life and death. In a thoroughly readable, anecdotal style, she pinpoints the drivers of change—the savvy consumer, the cost-conscious payer, and the rapidly improving technology—that will revolutionize the American health-care system. This is a must-read for those in every corner of the immense health-care web. With its strong narrative style, this is a book that will be read and talked about by everyone concerned about the future of American health care.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Herzlinger (Harvard Business Sch.) contends that improvements can be made to the American healthcare system by removing our current third-party payment system and allowing consumer demand to lead the healthcare market. Using eyewear as an example, Herzlinger shows how this consumer-driven market provides convenient, focused services with competitive prices. Most vision care services are not covered by medical insurance, forcing this sector of healthcare to respond to consumer demand. The author provides additional case studies, both within and outside the healthcare industry, that illustrate how team building, focusing on specific products and services, and prudent investments in technology can lead to convenient, cost-effective healthcare. While Herzlinger admits that abolishing the third-party payment system will present numerous difficulties, she includes suggestions for overcoming many of them. Written in a straightforward, readable style, this book is recommended for all libraries.?Tina Neville, Univ. of South Florida at St. Petersburg Lib.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

How does American business hold lessons for health care management and the health industry? Herzlinger's focus on consumer demands, changing market requirements, and business impacts on health organizations and structures provides an analysis of service provides' business practices, revealing how such providers succeed - and fail - in their jobs. -- Midwest Book Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1St Edition edition (January 6, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201489945
• ISBN-13: 978-0201489941
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,132,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Regina E. Herzlinger is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration Chair at the Harvard Business School. She was the first woman to be tenured and chaired at Harvard Business School and the first to serve on a number of corporate boards. She is widely recognized for her innovative research in health care, including her early predictions of the unraveling of managed care and the rise of consumer-driven health care and health care focused factories, two terms that she coined. Money has dubbed her the "Godmother" of consumer-driven health care.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars So she's no Tolstoy, but the ideas are great., March 14, 2004

By 

Michael Considine (Cambridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Market-driven Health Care: Who Wins, Who Loses In The Transformation Of America's Largest Service Industry (Paperback)

No one will accuse Ms. Herzlinger of being a great writer, but her conversational style is easy to read and she does have some good ideas for how the healthcare industry should be. Ideas that still haven't been implemented even now, 8 years after it was written. She does make a fairly convincing argument for how focused factories could reduce costs. In addition, suggestions that everybody should have health insurance, that healthcare providers should not be insulated from market forces, that consumers are the ones with the real power to stop the soaring healthcare costs, and that they'll only curtail spending when given incentive to do so are good points that can't be made often enough. Points that seem even more relevant today given the continued increase in healthcare costs, the inability of the HMO system to manage them, and the spiraling problem the growing uninsured population is creating (the more uninsured people there are, the more insurance costs, which increases the number of uninsured, etc.). She has good ideas, I think it's time people listened. It's of vital importance that the healthcare system incorporate what's great about America, what has made America a leader in every other industry: innovation and sensibly regulated free markets. Ms. Herzlinger gives us a good way to get it done.

I also have to ask if some of the other reviewers actually read the book. The author gives a pretty good analysis of how focused factories would reduce costs, using that 20% of the people produce 80% of the costs as a cornerstone of her argument. Also, she cites physicians' inability to deal with market forces as a cause of the problem and gives suggestions for how to deal with it.

22 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Admirable goals,solutions ignore some regulatory constraints, March 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Market-driven Health Care: Who Wins, Who Loses In The Transforation Of America's Largest Service Industry (Hardcover)

The author accurately identifies a subpopulation of patients who are middle class,time constrained, and annoyed with the difficulty of obtaining quick evaluation and therapy for a variety of health problems of varying complexity. After examining a number of systems for health care delivery, she gives the nod to highly specialized and focused units such as the Shouldice Clinic for hernia surgery in Canada. There are several problems with the soultions she proposes: 1) Goverment regulatory agencies and third party payers currently refuse to pay multiple consultants for seeing a patient on the same day. 2)Patients with complex multisystem problems may be ill served in such a focused system- eg. the patient who has congestive heart failure and a hernia. 3)There would monumental problems with education of medical students and residents in such a system. While this is a secondary consideration in a market driven system in which there is a physician surplus, if we fail to adequately educate physicians for future generations the law of supply and demand will ultimately come back to haunt us.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Herzlinger realizes that government can't solve everything., December 24, 1998

By 

Dan F. Duda ([e-mail]) (Lititz, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Market-driven Health Care: Who Wins, Who Loses In The Transforation Of America's Largest Service Industry (Hardcover)

There's hope. Finally, a clear thinker presents a viable case for something other than a purely political solution to the continuing health care cost crisis. Herzlinger is anything but pithy. However, buried in the laborious presentation of her case is a blueprint for the only real solution to this critical problem (i.e., a serious dose of personal responsibility for the cost of health care by those who create the demand). This book is worth reading.