People As Care Catalysts : From Being Patient to Becoming Healthy

The healthcare sector is undergoing strong expansion worldwide, as the focus changes from 'treating illness' to 'promoting wellness' and those able and willing to pay for their health make up for the shortcomings of national systems. How things evolve will depend on whether the national systems reinvent themselves around a new model of customer value, or fail to change and become obsolete. Global in scope and insightful in its conclusions, People as Care Catalysts sets out an agenda for how things could develop in the new 'healthcare economy'.

Health care is one of the fastest growing sectors of world business, with a vast and diverse array of organizations involved in care-related activities. But while elsewhere the customer has risen to power, the monolithic care systems of Europe have been left behind. Identical treatment of everyone is a code of honour, politicians are both manager and regulator, and citizens are expected to be passive receivers of expert services. As a result new market solutions are emerging, even in bastions of public provision such as the UK and Sweden. In the US things are increasingly fragmented, despite efforts to introduce ‘managed care’. Driven by these forces, and with a shift of focus from treating illness to promoting wellness, we are about to enter the global ‘health care economy’.

Building on a lifetime’s work in organizational theory, Richard Normann’s final book considers how new health care systems may be created that are equipped to reinvent themselves, and which develop a more co-productive relationship between customer and provider. Normann and his collaborators examine how prime mover organizations that build innovative value constellations can become catalysts for change, and make the efficient and effective operation of health care an asset to society instead of a perceived cost burden. Above all they show that if the public system does not take advantage of the new opportunities, others will and the public system will eventually be eliminated.

Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 7 List of contributors......Page 9 Foreword......Page 13 Preface – how this book came about......Page 17 Acknowledgements......Page 25 1: Challenges for health care in Western societies......Page 27 2: Health care – victim of the industrial model?......Page 35 3: Who and where is the customer?......Page 55 4: The future shape of health care......Page 65 5: A French exception or a demonstration of a European trend?......Page 95 6: Living healthy to an older age – would it be possible for everyone?......Page 105 7: Leadership for health care in the age of learning......Page 121 8: Overall conclusions this far......Page 153 9: An attempt to create an idealized design......Page 157 10: An impossible synthesis?......Page 193 11: Positioning our approach......Page 211 Appendix A: A challenge for economic policy......Page 221 Appendix B: Summary of research on value creation via coproductive meetings......Page 227 Appendix C: Useful abbreviations......Page 235 References......Page 237 Index......Page 241 Challenges for health care in western societies / Richard Normann Health care : victim of the industrial model? / Richard Normann Who and where is the customer? / Richard Normann The future shape of healthcare / Gordon Best and John Harries A French exception or a demonstration of a european trend? / Michel Crozier Living healthy to an older age : would it be possible for everyone? / Christophe Courbage and Orio Giarini Leadership for healthcare in the age of learning / Michael Maccoby Overall conclusions this far / Niklas Arvidsson An idealized design of the health care system / Bert Levin and Richard Normann An impossible synthesis? / Richard Normann Positioning our approach / Niklas Arvidsson. Could it be that public health care systems in Europe are digging their own graves by not reinterpreting their identity and design sufficiently in a new situation and by too single-handedly sticking to principles that served in the past but will now cause them to lose control?