Managed Care - January 2009 - (Page 22)

Q&A A Conversation With Clayton Christensen, DBA Network-Model Health Plans May Be Tomorrow’s Dinosaurs The Harvard professor who coined the terms ‘disruptive technology’ and ‘disruptive innovation’ now applies his concepts to medicine at does it take to rein in America’s runaway health care system? Clayton Christensen and two accomplished physicians, Jason Hwang and Jerome Grossman, have an answer: disruptive innovation. In their book, Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care, to be published this month, the trio adapts well researched commercial principles to medicine. If stakeholders followed the recommendations, they would radically change the way they operate: Doctors would relinquish some simple work to allied health professionals, hospitals would convert to integrated health systems, payers would merge with providers, high-deductible plans linked to health savings accounts would gain ground, and patients would assume more responsibility for and control of their own health care. Christensen, 56, teaches the course “Building a Sustainably Successful Enterprise” at Harvard Business School, where about 5 percent of his students are physicians returning to college for MBAs. He is founder or co-founder of Innosight, Innosight Institute, Innosight Ventures, and Rose Park Advisors, consulting and venture capital firms that use his innovation research. He has spoken at the World Health Care Congress, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins Medical School, and Harvard Medical School. The author received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Brigham Young University, a master’s degree in applied econometrics and the economics of less developed countries from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and master’s and doctoral degrees in business administration from Har- Wh vard. He spoke recently with MANAGED CARE Editor John Marcille. MANAGED CARE: Can you summarize your seventh book, Innovator’s Prescription, co-written with Jason Hwang, MD, and Jerome Grossman, MD? CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN: The problem of high cost and inaccessibility isn’t unique to health care; it has characterized the early stages of literally every modern industry. Those other industries have been transformed through the process of what we call “disruption” into services and products that are very affordable and conveniently accessible to many people. The reason health care remains expensive and inaccessible is that it has not yet been disrupted. MC: You coined the term “disruptive innovation.” What does it mean? CHRISTENSEN: A disruptive innovation is one that brings to the market products and services that are much more affordable, and in the end, much higher in quality. MC: Can you name a significant disruption in health care? CHRISTENSEN: Angioplasty has done it to coronary artery disease. It made interventional therapy so affordable and simple that many who would have had to live with the pain and risk of partially occluded arteries are able to walk out with stents. The cardiologists who provide angioplasty have disrupted heart surgeons who did coronary artery bypass. 22 MANAGED CARE / JANUARY 2009

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Managed Care - January 2009

Managed Care - January 2009 Editor's Memo Contents Legislation & Regulation News and Commentary Medication Management Compensation Monitor Health Care's Disruptive Innovations Q&A With Clayton Christensen 'Disruption' May Be Plans' Best Bet Avoid the PBM Rebate Trap HealthPartners Puts Diabetes on Notice Formulary Files Plan Watch Tomorrow's Medicine Ad Index Outlook Unmet Needs in the Management of Plaque Psoriasis Impact of RSV: Implications for Managed Care

Managed Care - January 2009

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