HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy for Healthcare (featuring articles by Michael E. Porter and Thomas H. Lee, MD)

Introduction

Rediscovering Strategy

by Thomas H. Lee, MD

Health care leaders are facing pressures for performance that demand departures from business as usual. In the United States, patients and their employers are becoming more sensitive to service costs and quality. Meanwhile, reimbursements are decreasing, yielding flat or declining revenues for health care providers. As Michael E. Porter and I argued in our 2015 New England Journal of Medicine article “Why Strategy Matters Now,” these factors mean that health care organizations need to start making more and smarter choices about how to differentiate themselves. These kinds of decisions lie at the heart of classic business strategy, and it is incumbent on health care leaders to approach strategy ...