Where Innovation Meets Innovation
By Julie Murchinson | Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
By Julie Murchinson. While many have argued that health reform and other federal regulatory posturing has left true innovation in health improvement for consumers and patients nearly impossible, the “innovation” concept seems to be the buzz word du jour across the health care industry. This post focuses on innovation as it relates to how health care is delivered and paid for.
Some organizations like Kaiser Permanente have been threading innovative approaches through aspects of their work for years with the Innovation Consultancy, the Innovative Learning Network and the Garfield Innovation Center, a living laboratory where ideas and solutions are tested in a real-world simulation. The rest of the industry is seeing new life forms start to take hold that are inspiring and organizing innovation. For example, Health 2.0 and other conferences are showcasing and tracking the latest and greatest innovations in web-2.0 ideas and iphone apps for health care. The California HealthCare Foundation recently started an Innovation Fund “to support entrepreneurs with business concepts that have the potential to significantly lower the total cost of delivering care or to substantially improve access to care”. The federal government is even joining the movement through its establishment of the CMS Innovation Center to test new payment methods through new models of health care delivery, the creation of the Community Health Data Initiative that is making publicly available data more accessible and by creating financial and non-financial challenges like the VA Innovation Initiative to create new solutions around new data availability or a specific goal/problem.
So, the question is…how well are these innovations being designed for and absorbed into the current health care marketplace to actually improve the efficiency and/or effectiveness of the health care system?
One indication the industry is attempting to absorb innovative technologies and solutions is the emergence of executive-level accountability for innovation among health systems, pharmaceutical companies, health plans and other health care companies. Following in the footsteps of Fortune 500 companies in other sectors, many large health care companies and organizations are establishing an Innovation Officer role, presumably to improve their brand and increase revenues in this time of incredible change and uncertainty. According to 2009 research conducted by Accenture’s Innovation Performance Group, establishing an executive as an innovation leader increases a company’s chances to drive higher innovation performance and capabilities than those who do not establish such a role. This is mostly because they do not let as many new ideas languish without the proper structure and internal champion and, better yet, manage innovation as a business process. The question is…will these innovation seekers believe the value of solutions professed by the innovators mentioned above and manage innovations well to a fruitful result or will the same macro issues stalling progress in health improvement for consumers and patients prevail?
Innovation may be a proxy for many things, but these two ends of the spectrum demonstrate the existence of significant new idea generation with an increased focus on transforming the business of health care with new, revenue-generating or brand-enhancing ideas. If innovation is the marriage of ideas that drive revenue with purchasers who can put them to work, then we may just be on to an opportunity to move progress in health improvement forward. That said, it requires the ideas to prove their value and purchasers to be comfortable with a potentially non-linear, longer-term road to the new nirvana.





