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The Health Of Health Care

Health care was once thought to be relatively recession-resistant. Not so, reports today's Chicago Tribune in a story about Moody's forecast of softening demand, tightening credit and declining reimbursement.

Certainly in good times but especially in bad, health care providers are way too passive about growth, tending to view top line revenue as fixed and pretty much out of their control. Neither is true, but if you believe it is, expenses are the only lever left to pull. And so it becomes that after much effort spent on reengineering, budget-cutting and de-layering, what's left behind is an organization too shell-shocked and untrusting to heed a "we now need to grow..." message.

Using a biblical term, successful organizations - those achieving true strategic separation - spend the "years of plenty" deepening loyal customer relationships and building robust growth-oriented cultures, recognizing them as the necessary seed corn for surviving the inevitable "years of lean."

How much better would a healthy market share gain seem right now? Don't wait to decide until the wolf of famine's at your door.  And don't just accept that performing no worse than anybody else is a sign of organizational health.


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