A radical challenge can help spur fresh ideas.
We’re getting more insight into as to where political and business leaders are looking for ideas to help lower the cost of healthcare in the US.
LA Care came up this week because it’s a public option currently available on the California exchange that competes for members with insurers offering plans in the same service areas. It is operating similarly to how a Medicare public option would be expected to operate.
Many leaders see LA Care as evolutionary because since inception the plan has been slowly improving the health and welfare of their members and reducing the cost of healthcare. The biggest issue that remains is healthcare reimbursement.
LA Care utilizes county resources as well as physicians and other healthcare providers contracted with commercial payers. Consequently, the plan hasn’t been able to lower their contracted rates and cost of healthcare enough to make their model truly transformative.
The Medicare public option could be revolutionary but it is unlikely to get industry support given that many of the largest healthcare companies are publicly traded and have a financial responsibility to their shareholders.
Change is going to happen whether you want it or not.
~Ed Catmull, Co-Founder of Pixar
A Radical Challenge
I have been reading the book Creativity Inc lately. One of the stories that the author Ed Catmull shares in the book is about giving his creatives at Pixar a radical challenge to lower the cost of their production. No easy task given the talent and complexity of the processes involved.
Ed was surprised by the positive response to the challenge. Reportedly, his creatives took it on and took the challenge to a whole new level once they understood how they fit into the bigger picture.
60% of Americans don’t necessarily want a single payer system but they want to pay less for their healthcare. Rather than fighting against the use of Medicare rates, as an industry we should embrace it as our radical challenge to lower the cost of healthcare.
The opportunity to address a problem is often missed because we don’t get to the root cause and understand all the implications to fix it. Instead we often layer on more solutions and consequently, more cost.
Vendors don’t help matters because they don’t want to address staff reductions as a benefit of their solution. It’s a sensitive issue and often a roadblock to closing a sale. To embrace the challenge, we need to need to look at everything we do with a fresh lens and question.
Types of questions to ask
- Does the task still need to be done?
- Does the process/system work well? If not, what’s the problem?
- What needs to change or what could be changed to fix the problem or streamline the process to make the task even easier?
- Could a vendor change the user interface or packaging to make the process easier?
- If you eliminate the task or make a process easier, how do existing resources get redeployed?
- What is the impact on total cost and revenue?
If you’re saying there is no way to reduce cost and make money if you only receive Medicare rates. Ask yourself why not? Make a list of all your reasons and challenge every single one.
It’s not about just improving what we do now. Constraints challenge people to think about what they are doing and to create better ways to do it.
