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This May Hurt A Little Bit: Entrepreneurs Can Fix Health Care

Washington Business Journal WBJ BizBeat:  "Former Kaiser CEO:  Entrepreneurs can fix health care."
"Entrepreneurs — not the government and surely not established industry players — will be the ones who ultimately fix the deeply flawed American health care system, said Dr. David Lawrence, the retired CEO of Kaiser Permanente."
“The problem with incumbent medical care systems is, they don’t change,” Lawrence said. “What they tend to do is capture the innovation, the entrepreneurial activity, and either slow it or they transform it to what their needs will be, and they often bastardize what are very, very important innovations.”

Lawrence predicted pain as the system evolves.
“To do these well is going to require disrupting traditional medical relationships with patients, it’s going to require disrupting sources of income for the traditional medical care system, and it’s going to require disrupting the relationship of the consumer to the medical care system," he said.
Lawrence's six areas of entrepreneurial opportunity:  triage, navigation, chronic illness, preventative health care, wellness management and end-of-life care.

The re-making of health care has already begun. Hospital executives, at least those with the slightest curiosity, should be terrified by the energetic entrepreneurs focused on the idea that many (most?) hospital admissions are properly viewed as defects somewhere else in the system.

Fix the defects...cut off admissions...add value...save costs...keep the value.  Repay VC funders.  Repeat. 

Many successful business plans have been built on less.
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