HBR.ORG
THE BIG IDEA
OCTOBER 2013
REPRINT R1310B
The Strategy That Will
Fix Health Care
Providers must lead the way in making value
the overarching goal by Michael E. Porter
and Thomas H. Lee
The Big Idea
THE STRATEGY
THAT WILL FIX
HEALTH CARE
2 Harvard Business Review October 2013
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Michael E. Porter is the
Bishop Lawrence University
Professor at Harvard
University. He is based at
Harvard Business School.
Thomas H. Lee is the
chief medical officer at
Press Ganey and the
former network president
of Partners HealthCare.
PROVIDERS MUST LEAD
THE WAY IN MAKING VALUE
THE OVERARCHING GOAL
BY MICHAEL E. PORTER
AND THOMAS H. LEE
ILLUSTRATION: SERGE BLOCH
I
n health care, the days of business as
usual are over. Around the world, every
health care system is struggling with
rising costs and uneven quality despite
the hard work of well-intentioned, welltrained clinicians. Health care leaders
and policy makers have tried countless
incremental fixes—attacking fraud, reducing errors, enforcing practice guidelines, making patients better “consumers,” implementing electronic medical records—but
none have had much impact.
It’s time for a fundamentally new strategy.
At its core is maximizing value for patients: that is,
achieving the best outcomes at the lowest cost. We
must move away from a supply-driven health care
system organized around what physicians do and
toward a patient-centered system organized around
what patients need. We must shift the focus from
the volume and profitability of services provided—
physician visits, hospitalizations, procedures, and
tests—to the patient outcomes achieved. And we
must replace today’s fragmented system, in which
every local provider offers a full range of services,
with a system in which services for particular medical conditions are concentrated in health-delivery
organizations and in...