The Health Care Business

Caring For Profit traces how Canada's $77 billion a year health care industry is turning away from its original mandate of providing the best possible medical care to Canadians, and how multinational capital is forcing its way into our non'profit health care system. In Caring For Profit, Colleen Fuller traces alliances that were struck between private insurers and the medical profession during the 1950s and 1960s to defeat "socialized medicine". These alliances survived the establishment of medicare in Canada in 1968, and have been strengthened by new forces emerging in an era of globalization. Instead of a health care system focused on providing the highest quality of care to the greatest number of Canadians, the system is increasingly dominated by financial giants more concerned with consolidations, mergers, acquisitions, and higher profit margins. Caring for Profit is a "who's who" of key people and corporations making money in Canada's health care sector ? and a portrait of the strategies and alliances that threaten to replace the principles of medicare with the dictates of the stock market.

This is the definitive textbook on strategic planning and management in health care organizations for those pursuing a career in health care in undergraduate, business, and medical schools, and ancillary health professions such as nursing or physician assistant, as well as for established health care professionals, including doctors, who are completing programs and degrees in business administration to prepare themselves for greater involvement in the management of health care delivery. This book features all the basic information on strategic planning and management within the unique context of organizations concerned with the delivery and financing of health care. It notes the singular strategic environment in health care, explaining the special procedures and options available to health care organizations, and providing real-life examples in the form of case studies.

A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.

This book demonstrates how to successfully manage and lead healthcare institutions by employing the logic of business model innovation to gain competitive advantages. Since clerk-like routines in professional organizations tend to overlook patient and service-centered healthcare solutions, it challenges the view that competition and collaboration in the healthcare sector should not only incorporate single-end services, therapies or diagnosis related groups. Moreover, the authors focus on holistic business models, which place greater emphasis on customer needs and put customers and patients first. The holistic business models approach addresses topics such as business operations, competitiveness, strategic business objectives, opportunities and threats, critical success factors and key performance indicators.The contributions cover various aspects of service business innovation such as reconfiguring the hospital business model in healthcare delivery, essential characteristics of service business model innovation in healthcare, guided business modeling and analysis for business professionals, patient-driven service delivery models in healthcare, and continuous and co-creative business model creation. All of the contributions introduce business models and strategies, process innovations, and toolkits that can be applied at the managerial level, ensuring the book will be of interest to healthcare professionals, hospital managers and consultants, as well as scholars, whose focus is on improving value-generating and competitive business architectures in the healthcare sector.

"[This book is] the most authoritative assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of recent trends toward the commercialization of health care," says Robert Pear of The New York Times. This major study by the Institute of Medicine examines virtually all aspects of for-profit health care in the United States, including the quality and availability of health care, the cost of medical care, access to financial capital, implications for education and research, and the fiduciary role of the physician. In addition to the report, the book contains 15 papers by experts in the field of for-profit health care covering a broad range of topicsâ€"from trends in the growth of major investor-owned hospital companies to the ethical issues in for-profit health care. "The report makes a lasting contribution to the health policy literature." â€"Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.

Explains how employers can take control of the increasing burden of health care costs, using the approach taken by Serigraph, a company that focused on consumer responsibility, primary care, and centers of value, as a model for improving health care while lowering the cost.

Managing Health Care Business Strategy is the definitive textbook on strategic planning and management for healthcare organizations. It offers all the basic information on strategic planning and management within the unique context of organizations concerned with the delivery and financing of health care. It does this by noting the singular strategic environment in health care, explaining the special procedures and options available to health care organizations, and providing real-life examples in the form of case studies. It includes not only a description of the basic multi-step process of creating and then managing a strategic plan, but also a detailed look at the role played by the key business functions (finance, marketing, human resources, information technology, and law) as well as specific strategic options (merger/acquisition, reorganization, joint venture) and some of the popular tools for analyzing strategic situations (balanced scorecard, Six Sigma, SWOT).

Home Healthcare Business Startup on a Budget Do you have what it takes to start, run, and grow an in-home care business? When I was faced with the reality of caring for my mother when she became ill while also caring for my elderly grandma, I realized that I needed more education (and help) for my situation. While I loved them both dearly, my love itself wasn't enough to properly care for them. I decided to gain that education and eventually became a CNA. When my mother and then grandmother finally passed away, I continued in this field of providing at-home care. Caring for a family member at home while they are recovering, terminally ill, or in the final stages of life can be stressful. The burden can be eased when you're able to bring in qualified help to assist you. Home healthcare encompasses a large range of skilled nursing and unskilled home care services that can be accomplished in a client's home after an injury or illness. It can also apply to services that are for an older or disabled person who might require assistance with daily activities such as cooking, bathing, running errands, shopping, and more. Do you have a caring, compassionate heart? Do you want to start a business where you know you will be assisting people when they need it most? Do you want to be your own boss and run an agency of skilled professionals who you trust to do the hands-on work? In this Home Healthcare Business Startup on a Budget book, I will outline the different levels of care that your agency might provide according to the need you see in your community. This could range from simple companion care services with light housekeeping and friendly faces, to more skilled nursing and palliative care. The fact is that you need not be personally professionally skilled to be an agency director. You can have a heart for starting the business, do the back-end work, and hire trained professionals to work for you. I'll show you how! This book will discuss all aspects of starting an in-home care services company, with variations on skilled and unskilled service providers. I guide you through starting this business from scratch, step-by-step. Once we have the business established, I will talk you through how to grow and run your operation from marketing, advertising, and dealing with employees. Be sure to check out the table of contents to see exactly what my book will provide to you in terms of information. I would strongly encourage you to get your hands on any and everything you can read about starting a business like this before you take the leap. We will Discuss Topics such as: What home healthcare means If you're cut out for this line of work What different levels of care encompass The different types of services your new agency might provide What a day in the life of an in-home care provider looks like 8 steps for building your business How to gain clients through advertising and partnerships How to craft a solid business plan What licensing you'll have to obtain How to get paid How to hire staff and manage employees in your day-to-day operations All this and much much more is contained in this book. I also describe to you some True-to-Life, Real-World Illustrations of what I'm teaching you in action with personal stories from those who have experiences with this field. I hope that reading about the concepts in action will give you a better understanding.