{"id":1826,"date":"2009-09-11T11:52:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-11T11:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/derail-the-healthcare-gravy-train-introduce-competitive-multi-sourcing\/"},"modified":"2009-09-11T11:52:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-11T11:52:00","slug":"derail-the-healthcare-gravy-train-introduce-competitive-multi-sourcing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/derail-the-healthcare-gravy-train-introduce-competitive-multi-sourcing\/","title":{"rendered":"Derail the Healthcare gravy-train: introduce competitive multi-sourcing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/2009\/07\/us-businesses.html\" onclick=\"window.open(this.href,&#39;_blank&#39;,&#39;scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0&#39;); return false\" style=\"FLOAT: right\"><strong><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Gravy_Train\" border=\"0\" class=\"at-xid-6a00d8356fb76c69e20120a5ba958b970c \" src=\"http:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/images\/6a00d8356fb76c69e20120a5ba958b970c-800wi.jpg\" style=\"MARGIN: 0px\" title=\"Gravy_Train\" \/><\/strong><\/a><strong> Being a relatively recent immigrant to US society, it&#39;s fascinating to observe the political games corporations and politicians play to reach their desired outcomes.&#0160; <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What I find a little absurd is how easy it is to decipher the real political motives behind all the rhetoric; especially those ridiculous commercials sponsored by insurance companies trying to protect their monopolistic positions and&#0160;keep their&#0160;gravy-train chugging along.<\/p>\n<p>Working in the sourcing industry&#0160;forces you to cut&#0160;quickly through&#0160;complex issues to find sensible solutions, and healthcare doesn&#39;t seem a whole lot different &#8211; despite the sheer scale of the issues and requirements.&#0160; Trust me,\n<\/p>\n<p><!-- pagebreak --><br \/>\nhaving spent most my life in the UK, government-owned healthcare is <span style=\"TEXT-DECORATION: underline\">never<\/span> the way to go.&#0160; A lot of my family work for the National Health Service (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nhs.uk\/Pages\/HomePage.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NHS<\/a>), and the&#0160;disorganized&#0160;patient-service, layers&#0160;upon layers&#0160;of bureaucratic administration, waiting lists that would be unbelievably unacceptable in this country, create a very deep&#0160;hole that is almost impossible from which to escape.&#0160; In fact, the NHS has been outsourcing like crazy the last few years as it tries to drive out cost and access skills it simply cannot develop itself.&#0160; It&#39;s become a gravy train for&#0160;service providers&#0160;and consulting firms alike &#8211; and even more of a cost-drain than many of the UK&#39;s other public services, which also pour out billions a year on back-office support.&#0160; The NHS can&#39;t even afford to employ specialist doctors in some areas because of recent budget cut-backs (something with which I have personal experience).<\/p>\n<p>While this governmental cost-drain scenario is a highly undesirable outcome, so it the monopolistic outcome, which is currently plaguing the US healthcare industry.&#0160; Remember the old days of the telecom monopolies where the providers effectively set their own prices and created a whole gravy train of their own?&#0160; Remember when the airline industry only had high-cost travel options?&#0160; Even today I have to pay to watch re-runs of the Godfather on cable, despite shelling out $100 a month for their movie packages&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>Back to the point of this post&#8230; how have large corporations been driving out cost, increasing transparency and competitiveness within their global sourcing models?&#0160;&#0160; Not many use one service provider for all of&#0160;their IT or BPO requirements &#8211; they create a competitive ecosystem and multi-source to competitive providers who fight for new projects and new contracts.&#0160;&#0160;It keeps the suppliers on their toes, keeps prices competitive, and (should) help improve productivity as providers also compete on quality and outcome-based goals.&#0160; The key caveat is to ensure this ecosystem is <em>managed effectively <\/em>to ensure service providers are meeting quality standards, service levels etc.&#0160; A healthy ecosystem ofservice providers, eager to compete for business is creating downward pressure on prices, increased customer choice, and also a quality dimension where providers need to&#0160;create more&#0160;innovative customer offerings in order to differentiate themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Seems to me the answer with the US health insurance&#0160;providers, is to create a similar ecosystem where there are more providers in play, where they are held to certain standards, and are regulated&#0160;with how&#0160;they price their services.&#0160; Again, the caveat is to ensure this ecosystem is <em>managed effectively<\/em>.&#0160;&#0160;If the&#0160;government can help kick-start this&#0160;ecosystem, them I&#39;m all for reform.&#0160; There&#39;s nothing&#0160;wrong with a government insurance alternative if it drives more competitiveness into the system, but the key is to&#0160;create a competitive environment where the&#0160;government only needs to step in to ensure everyone in playing by the rules.&#0160; <\/p>\n<p>I&#39;m excited to see how this will play out; breaking-down closed markets and monopolistic corporate behavior will&#0160;do nothing but good for thehealthcare system that is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/2009\/07\/us-businesses.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">crippling the competitiveness<\/a> of US businesses today.&#0160; And if we need to train more doctors and nurses to support the millions of newly-insured, is that such a bad way to stimulate the US economy?&#0160; Seems to me that the healthcare industry is going to dominate global economies for decades to come, with the increasing cost of caring for&#0160;elderly citizens, Alzheimer patients etc.&#0160; If the US can seize this reform as an opportunity to lead the world in medical research and healthcare practices, isn&#39;t this just the way to stimulate a tired economy?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being a relatively recent immigrant to US society, it&#39;s fascinating to observe the political games corporations and politicians play to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[832],"tags":[],"organization":[],"ppma_author":[19],"class_list":["post-1826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sourcing-best-practises"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the 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