What's Your Growth Prescription?

As healthcare organizations reevaluate their strategies for growth, we examine three very different approaches.

This article first appeared in the October 2014 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.

Hospitals and health system leaders are facing both the biggest threats and the biggest opportunities for their organizations over the coming half-decade, as healthcare reform moves more firmly from theory to action. In the aggregate, they're already facing declining inpatient volume and declining reimbursements. Those challenges are felt unevenly, but universally. Further, even those with the blessing of favorable demographics are competing ever more directly with narrowly focused competitors that are nibbling away at outpatient volume as well.

Should hospitals and health systems be the consolidator of those growing services or should they partner with someone else who does it better? How important is leverage in each of dozens of potential markets? How do you, as a leader, ensure basic survival, and what does that look like?

Senior executives wrestle with all of these questions and more every day, and yet not all of the attempts to reshape their organization in this time of upheaval will succeed.