Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results

In Redefining Health Care, internationally renowned strategy expert Michael Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Teisberg reveal the underlying-and largely overlooked-causes of the problem, and provide a powerful prescription for change.

The authors argue that participants in the health care system have competed to shift costs, accumulate bargaining power, and restrict services, rather than create value for patients. This zero-sum competition takes place at the wrong level-among health plans, networks, and hospitals-rather than where it matters most, in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific health conditions. Redefining Health Care lays out a breakthrough framework for redefining health care competition based on patient value. With specific recommendations for hospitals, doctors, health plans, employers, and policy makers, this book shows how to move to a positive-sum competition that will unleash stunning improvements in quality and efficiency.

The U.S. health care system is in crisis. At stake are the quality of care for millions of Americans and the financial well-being of individuals and employers squeezed by skyrocketing premiums-not to mention the stability of state and federal government budgets.

In Redefining Health Care, internationally renowned strategy expert Michael Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Teisberg reveal the underlying-and largely overlooked-causes of the problem, and provide a powerful prescription for change.

The authors argue that participants in the health care system have competed to shift costs, accumulate bargaining power, and restrict services, rather than create value for patients. This zero-sum competition takes place at the wrong level-among health plans, networks, and hospitals-rather than where it matters most, in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific health conditions. Redefining Health Care lays out a breakthrough framework for redefining health care competition based on patient value. With specific recommendations for hospitals, doctors, health plans, employers, and policy makers, this book shows how to move to a positive-sum competition that will unleash stunning improvements in quality and efficiency.

Economist.com

...a profound and powerful critique of America s health-care system. It deserves to be read widely. And probably will be.

Michael E. Porter is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School and the author of sixteen books and numerous articles on competition and strategy. Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg is an associate professor at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business and author of over fifty articles and cases on strategy and innovation.