If you are not in the healthcare space, you may wonder why there is so much talk about it. That’s too big of a question for one post, or maybe one hundred posts. Instead, let’s look at some of the industry players:
- patients
- doctors, nurses, PAs, NPs, and other clinicians
- administrators
- hospitals, private practices, labs, and clinics
- health insurers
- healthcare vendors and manufacturers of drugs, equipment, supplies, software, and services
- investors in hospitals, health insurers, and healthcare vendors
- government
- employers
Each of these players can have radically different incentives, many of which are not primarily focused on patient care. Don’t get me wrong – I am not saying vendors or insurers or employers have evil intent, but the market pressure of increasing shareholder returns is very distracting, and the business of business is difficult, with 1/3 of all new companies failing to survive two years.
Add in patients gaming or abusing the system, government legislation and partisan politics, hospital administrators focused on auditing and compliance, indigent care, and dozens of other factors…
With this incredible diversity of participants and the difficulty of running a successful business in any industry, a better question is “how could healthcare not be complicated?”