Notes From The 4th Forum On Health Policy And Management In Berlin, Germany

Editor’s note: This post is part of a series of several posts related to the 4th European Forum on Health Policy and Management: Innovation & Implementation, held in Berlin, Germany on January 29 and 30, 2015. For updates on the Forum’s results please check the Center for Healthcare Management’s website or follow on Twitter @HCMatColumbia. An innovation is a (new) course of action intended to improve on the status quo. In health care, a field that overflows with self-proclaimed visionaries, innovations are a dime a dozen. Any halfway sentient being can conceive (and market) a vision and attach to it a “strategic plan” and kindred entrepreneurial accouterments. The true test of an innovation’s value is whether the changes affect improvement and whether the plan of action is indeed strategic, that is, a reliable guide from condition A to improvement B. How these questions get answered has much to do with the identities of those who behold purported improvements. Innovations that look fine to an economist, for instance, might seem problematic to a sociologist, a political analyst, or a scholar of organizations and management. Innovations that seem to be promising in one national context might be implausible in another. Innovations that win the acclaim of health care managers may trigger complications for caregivers and vice versa. Assessing the prospects for and progress of innovations demands breadth of view — interpretations and deliberations that incorpo...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured Hospitals Organization and Delivery Population Health caregivers Center for Healthcare Management David Blumenthal Health Policy Innovation Ron Kuerbitz Source Type: blogs