There is an array of books on how health care should best be managed. Here we present our pick of prescriptions. This was first published in Business Strategy Review, Volume 21, Issue 4, 2010. Subscribe today to receive your quarterly copy delivered to your home or work place. http://bit.ly/BSR-subscribe

1. Agenda-setting books: Healthy reading
There is an array of books on how health care
should best be managed. Here, we present our
pick of the prescriptions.
© Copyright 2013 London Business School

2. Reengineering Health Care: A Manifesto for Radically Rethinking
Health Care Delivery
by Jim Champy and Harry Greenspun (FT Press, 2010)
Champy was co-author of the landmark book, Re-engineering the
Corporation, which showed how businesses could retool the
processes they used to achieve dramatic cost savings, greater
customer satisfaction and more value. In this book, he and his coauthor (a doctor of medicine) show how this proven re-engineering
methodology can be applied to health care (including physician
practices, hospitals and whole health systems) to improve quality,
reduce costs and expand access. They urge a focus on prevention
and wellness, explore ways to use technology to better deliver
services and reduce costs, and provide examples of successes, such
as Lenox Hill Hospital’s ER.
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3. The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for
Health Care
by Clayton M. Christensen, Jerome H. Grossman and Jason
Hwang (McGraw-Hill, 2008)
Christensen is the author of the best-selling The Innovator’s
Dilemma, which explored how the development of new
technologies can create an entirely new value proposition,
disrupting the normal results of innovation. Here he and his coauthors (both doctors) look at the technological enablers of
disruption in order to explain how various aspects of the health
care system such as the hospital business model, the physician
practice business model, the reimbursement system and medical
education can be effectively disrupted to produce more costeffective and accessible health care.
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4. Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on
Results
by Michael E. Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg (Harvard
Business School Press, 2006)
Porter and Teisberg (authorities on strategy, competition and innovation)
propose a focus on value (as measured by health outcomes per dollar
expended) to reform the health care system. As current competition in
the health care field has failed to provide an accessible, equitable
system at reasonable cost, they assert that the nature of competition
itself must be reformed. It’s not acceptable for providers to shift costs,
increase bargaining power or deny services to patients in need. The key
is to provide real value for patients, not excessive profits for health care
providers. By boosting competition in the diagnosis, treatment, and
prevention of specific health conditions, hospitals, doctors, health plans,
employers and policy makers can truly revolutionise health care
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5. Healthcare Management
edited by Keiran Walshe and Judith Smith (Open University
Press, 2006)
This volume, aimed at researchers, managers and health care
policymakers, examines the health care practices and policies that
pose the greatest challenge to those managing health care
organisations. It looks at different health care sectors (such as
primary care, acute care and mental health; partnerships with other
agencies; and health care information systems and technology) in
order to provide guidance to those in training or in the field who
want a guide to the theories, issues and skills needed for effective
leadership. The chapters include self-test exercises, summary
boxes, further reading and lists of Web-based resources.
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6. Leadership for Healthcare
by Jean Hartley and John Benington (Policy Press, 2010)
Aimed at those who have leadership positions in health care
organisations, especially the British National Health Service
(as well as those in government, education, housing, leisure
services, the police, fire services and the voluntary sector),
this book provides a set of a half-dozen lenses aimed at
exploring the leadership literature relevant to health care. It
looks beyond the idea of leadership as something performed
by an individual, arguing instead that leadership must be
understood and developed in terms of the actions and
practices of many people within a broad range of areas that
affect the health of the population.
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7. Chaos and Organization in Health Care
by Thomas H. Lee and James J. Mongan (MIT Press, 2009)
These two doctors believe that tight organisational structures will
help put an end to the chaos in the current system that results in
high costs and inefficient care. They explore a number of specific
examples of successes (such as Geisinger Health Systems and
Virginia Mason Medical Centre) to show changes that work –
including salaried physicians, electronic medical records and
other technologies, aggressive treatment regimes, programmes
to coordinate the care of the sickest patients and team-based
care. Although they present many ways that they believe costs
can be lowered, there is very little in the way of detailed financial
analyses of these ideas.
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8. Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the
World’s Most Admired Service Organisations
by Leonard L. Berry and Kent D. Seltman (McGraw-Hill, 2008)
Based on numerous in-depth interviews and observations of staff,
patients, clinicians and the interactions between them, the book is
filled with praise for this remarkably successful institution; but it fails
to offer comparisons to other institutions or specifics on how things
that make Mayo special could be replicated. It is, however, useful
for concrete examples of approaches that work at Mayo, including
the team approach to health care (made easier by the fact that all of
its physicians are employed directly by Mayo and are paid on a
salary basis), Mayo’s early entry into integrating medical records
and its use of technology to improve access to those records, as
well as the strong channels of communication between
administrators and physicians.
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9. Economic Analysis in Health Care
by Stephen Morris, Nancy Devlin and David Parkin (John
Wiley, 2007)
This comparative study explores the economics of health care
systems and evaluates health care technologies. Basically a
textbook for students with knowledge of economic analysis, it
presents case studies from the UK and other countries and
analyses decision making by individuals, health care providers
and governments. While based in economic theory, it also
explores such diverse subjects as the behaviour of patients,
doctors and hospitals, and analytical techniques developed to
aid in decisions about resource allocation. It carefully explains
that health choices must be made on the basis of how much
health care costs, who pays for it and how it is distributed.
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10. The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper,
and Fairer Health Care
by T.R. Reid (Penguin, 2009)
The author compares health care services across the globe, a
study triggered by his own experiences while seeking help for a
chronic problem in the countries in which he served as a
Washington Post correspondent. His health condition led him to
travel around the world, visiting doctors in places as diverse as
Britain, Taiwan, France, Germany, Sweden and India to see how
their systems differed. He discovered that, in most nations, health
care costs are far lower than in the United States, while the
outcomes are better. He notes the problems of other countries as
well as their successes and points to the universal problems
arising as a result of aging populations and the development of
expensive new technologies.
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11. This was first published in Business Strategy
Review Volume 21 Issue 4 – 2010
Visit our website www.london.edu/bsr
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