Consider This Speculative Amazon Scenario

By TORY WOLF Amazon has many puzzled about its plans for healthcare. Arguably, Amazon is just as puzzled, but is – in effect — running a massive Delphi process to sort out the plan. Amazon is, after all, the Breaker of Industries, Destroyer of Margins. Allow rumors to float, hire some people, have meetings, seek a few regulatory approvals, start a vaguely missioned non-profit with other business titans. Fear and greed do the rest. Stock prices gyrate as investors bet and counter bet on who is vulnerable, incumbent CEOs promise cooperation or competitive hostility, analysts speculate, “old hands” pontificate, and consultants send megabytes of unsolicited slide decks to South Lake Union. All that information gets exposed without any material commitment. Disrupting the roadblocks to healthcare innovation Proper strategic planning requires consideration of a few disruptive (if less likely) scenarios. Amazon getting into hospital supply or creating yet another benefits buying group is easy to imagine but conservative in scope. And we know Bezos thinks long-term and that profits are secondary to platform building.   We also know that the biggest target for disruption–complex, opaque, and inefficient care delivery – remains largely undisturbed despite wave after wave of innovations: ACO and bundle payment models, transparency initiatives (e.g., Castlight), private exchanges, direct contracting models, telemedicine, alternative primary care models (concierge, ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Amazon Castlight Orbitz Source Type: blogs