Putting the Patient first to end the healthcare malaise

What can we Learn from the Mayo Clinic

Taken from the Financial Times - 08/18/2009
By Stefan Stern

"All this angry shouting about healthcare reform must be really bad for people's blood pressure. But it is no joking matter. "Health is Wealth", as they say. Nothing could be more serious.

In the heat of the debate taking place in the US, little light is being shed on what really matters: outcomes. But while the funding of health care is not a matter for this column, the management of it is. And it turns out that the task of introducing better healthcare for all is fundamentally a management challenge.

The Brits know this better than anybody. The UK's National Health Service was founded, in the face of bitter opposition, more than 60 years ago. It has been a vast, living experiment, and a monument to managerialism, good and bad.

Readers in the US may have heard some bizarre tales about theNHS in the past few days. I have not been able to keep up with all of them. But as a clarification I should point out that on one hand, yes, state healthcare in the UK is effectively rationed as the public purse is not infinitely large. Politicians do not like admitting this, because it is unpopular. But it is true.

On the other hand, no; eminent and less eminent people are not simply left to die because they suffer from advanced cancer or severe physical handicaps. People with these conditions are not seen as "essentially worthless" , as one American journal put it. The physicist Stephen Hawking, who was cited as an example of a potential victim of the system, replied: "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which i would not have survived." And for which, he might have added, he has paid not a penny piece, beyond his general tax bill.

What are the lessons from Mayo? Among others, they are, "solve the customer's total problem", "turn customers into marketers", "approach innovation as a discipline and a work in progress", "hire for values", "excellence is a journey" , and "challenge the performers to improve the performance".

The HARVARD MIS-STEP AND THE CASE OF ARRESTED EVOLUTION

Companies at war with their customers

The Planning team sets up your buckets

The investment team fills them up

is the plan and the stratigies doing what they were designed to do

The Industry - Thinking Outside the Managed Account Box - The Next Stage

From Limited partnerships to Loaded funds and annunities to Managed accounts - The next Level - OUTCOMES DRIVEN

The Advisory Trapped Inside The Bank and Brokerage Model

If it ain't broke don't fix it some say

Buy if if doesn't evolve it will die

Challenge them to evolve or Die

Wher is the Challenge -  Can you Go Mayo

A complex adaptive Model for an Evolutionary Phase

Old Models were static did not evolve The Cannon Thing and japan thing the culture Trapped them