HFMA VIEWS

Kevin C. (Casey) Nolan
Managing Director, Navigant Consulting, Inc.

At a recent hospital board planning retreat I gave a presentation on the trends in health care. It is a presentation topic that I speak on frequently, laying out the tremendous changes occurring in our industry, outlining the challenges posed by those changes, and offering suggestions for addressing the changes.

After my presentation, one of the hospital board members pulled me aside. I expected him to have a question on my presentation or perhaps (!) even to offer a complimentary word. Instead, he told me that he was the president of a textile manufacturing company and that the textile industry was experiencing a radical restructuring due to global competition that made the transformation of the health care industry that I talked absolutely pale in comparison.

As I listened while this board member gave me a primer on the transformation of the textile industry, an interesting thought occurred to me regarding the health care industry: other industries do have similar or perhaps even greater challenges and we can probably garner some ideas from them for how to deal with our challenges. My observation is that health care professionals tend to talk to and interact with other health care professionals. We tend to read health care publications, surf health care oriented web sites, and attend health care focused conferences. This is a characteristic that I am sure is not unique to the health care industry. I am certain that my friend the textile president board member reads textile publications, talks to his colleagues in the textile industry and goes to textile trade shows.

As large as the health care industry is, it is still “only” 15% of the GDP. There is another 85% of the economy that is not health care. And that other 85% also faces intense and increasing pressures from competition, regulation, technological changes, consumerism, and numerous other factors beyond their control. We can—and should—take time to step out of our health care-centric world and scan the other 85% of the economy to see how other industries and businesses are coping—or have coped—with similar changes and challenges. There are lots of smart people outside of the health care industry who have wrestled with problems similar in nature to those facing our industry and we can learn a lesson or two from them and perhaps tackle our challenges with a new perspective.

So as important and interesting as our health care world is, we need to recognize that we aren’t the only industry undergoing a transformation and that if be build a bridge from our world to the other 85% of the economy, we can bring back some new ideas and approaches for tackling the changes and challenges rocking our industry.