Newsletters

America’s lack of understanding of our health care system is costing billions of dollars each year. The low levels of understanding really shouldn’t be a surprise. The United States has created a complex scheme of health care relationships... read more

Health care remains (and will continue to remain) a hot topic of discussion. All Republican candidates promise to repeal Obamacare (aka The Affordable Care Act) as one of their first actions as chief executive. However, beyond the desire to repeal... read more

Not surprisingly, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the Super Committee) failed to come to an agreeable solution to reduce our debt. As we have learned all too often over the past year, the differences between the Democratic and... read more

Thomas Jefferson said, “An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will.” We need an informed citizenry more today than at almost any other time in our history. We’re going to be making some very tough and difficult... read more

The numbers speak for themselves.

A significant majority of the population (75%) doesn’t understand all of the complexities now involved with health care, the number of individuals actually engaged in the health care dialogue is... read more

Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research paints a pretty gloomy picture of the reality of what many individuals are facing in our economy. In a survey completed in 2009 (it may have improved a little in the past two years but not... read more

One of the items talked about quite frequently in this new health care world is how to get the consumer more engaged in the process and in the decision-making. Becoming more “patient-centered” is the mantra of many throughout the industry (see... read more

In June, 2009 (early in the health care reform debate), The MckinseyQuarterly produced a brief commentary highlighting the changes that have occurred in health care economics over the years. It should have been a resource to guide health care... read more

Mitt Romney is getting bashed for his attempt to reform the health care system in Massachusetts while he was governor. Republicans and Democrats alike are using RomneyCare as a political target to either support or challenge the federal Affordable... read more

In the book, The Survivors Club, LA Times writer Ben Sherwood takes a detailed look at how some people survive and actually grow personally when confronted with a catastrophic event while others simply crash and burn. He puts forward an... read more

The catastrophe in Japan and the growing instability in the Middle East and northern Africa add new challenges to America’s already full agenda of challenges. There is no doubt the character of our country is being tested as we attempt to... read more

If you ever want to liven-up a dinner conversation just start talking about health care. Especially since last year’s passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the country has divided into its respective political... read more

It’s pretty safe to say that most people don’t like the new health care law. You can debate the poll numbers all you want but most polls are consistent in finding that there aren’t many who support the Patient Protection and Affordable Care... read more

Last year was tough but we weren’t really surprised. We had anticipated 2010 to be more of a stabilizing year for the economy; we didn’t expect it to be a turnaround year. While the unemployment numbers remain unacceptably high, the... read more

First, we want to wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving. Our country has had a tough year. Many individuals and businesses have had a tough year as well. Despite the challenges, it’s important to step back periodically to count the blessings... read more

Last week Judge Robert Vinson of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Florida handed down a decision of what will most likely be many challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. A separate challenge is... read more

Whether we decide to accept it or not, our world changed in 2008. Economists and politicians will be debating and studying the causes of our economic meltdown for years to come. As a society, we will likely be digging out of the aftermath for... read more

Next month the first wave of changes resulting from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (health care reform) kick in. For the foreseeable future, we will be experiencing a restructuring of how health care works in this country. The... read more

A few weeks ago we were engaged in a discussion with a group of people explaining why prescription drugs traditionally cost more in the United States than in Canada. When we started to talk about the different approaches other countries use for... read more

It wasn’t too long ago that HMOs entered the market as the new savior to fix our growing health care cost crisis. HMO sales reps blanketed the health care landscape with the promises of “no co-pays, no deductibles, and you’ll never see a... read more

In 2007 the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions began publishing a “snapshot” of the health care consumer. They have published an updated picture each year and we have them all posted in our Library. Our August, 2008 Newsletter... read more

With the pace of the changes taking place in our lives today it is sometimes challenging to keep your perspective on it all. Perspective is defined as the relative importance you place on things at a particular point in time. It’s how you... read more

We had hoped to take a break from “health care reform.” But, it’s hard to get away from it when that is all we hear. The vote taken on Sunday in the House is another step toward reallocating the financial resources of the health... read more

By almost any measure, we are just not a happy people right now. Our approval of our government leadership remains at low levels, our satisfaction with our work has plummeted, and the job opportunities aren’t growing nearly as fast as we were... read more

With the changes that will likely occur in our political decision-making as a result of last week’s election in Massachusetts, all sides are taking a “regrouping moment” to determine the direction and impact this event will have on... read more

We wish all of you a Happy Holiday and best wishes for 2010. When we wrote this piece last year we were going through one of the most dramatic changes in our economy we’ve ever experienced. At the time we didn’t know the depth or extent... read more

In his 2000 book “The Tipping Point; How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference," New York Times writer Malcolm Gladwell explored the world of epidemics. Not epidemics in the clinical sense of the word, but epidemics that are created with... read more

When we started Collaboration Health Care, Inc. three years ago we began with a passion and vision to see if we could help the health care system innovate and create new ideas to improve health care in this country. We started by creating our own... read more

We’ll admit from the outset that we have a bias for this profession. One of us was a respected practicing chiropractor for over 20 years, and the other has been watching and participating in the evolution of the profession for over 16 years... read more

There is no shortage of information about leadership, management, and what it takes to be a leader. The “gurus” of management, (Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, Tom Peters, Jack Welch, Ram Charan, Bill George, etc.) having studied the art of... read more

Putting together, implementing, and managing a successful team is an art. Each group of individuals is unique and each project or initiative brings with it its own unique set of issues. With the macro-economic challenges we will all be facing in... read more

Newt Gringrich’s Center for Health Transformation has the vision of creating an “Intelligent Health System”. This is a system where “the individual is at the center of knowledge, decision-making, and responsibility for their... read more

If all goes as planned, our country is expected to have a reformed health care system by December 31, 2009. The definition of reform isn’t at all clear, but as stated in Obama’s budget, the goal is to “put the Nation on a path to... read more

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been debating the best way to provide health care in our country for well over 100 years. “Compulsory health care” (universal health care) was introduced by Teddy Roosevelt as part of his... read more

It’s pretty easy to get sucked into all of the negativity surrounding the changes that have occurred in our economy over the past year. Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase commented, “I am shocked at the number of people who are still... read more

Well, 2008 is coming to a close. There’s no getting around it, it’s been a tough year from a business perspective. And, 2009 looks like it’s going to have its own set of challenges.

It would be very easy to sink down... read more

Somebody once said that an idea without any action is just an opinion. We all have a lot of ideas, but it’s the steps you take to make those ideas a reality that really matter. Over the years we’ve watched a lot of ideas succeed and fail... read more

When we post our newsletter next month we’ll have a new president. We still don’t know which candidate it will be but we do know we’ll be heading in a new direction with some new leadership. As anticipated, the political process has... read more

We generally try to steer-clear of talking politics in these newsletters. We've found that talking politics will generally get you immediately labeled into one of the two major camps. And, when you're labeled on one side, the folks on the other... read more

The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions has recently put together some good information to use when evaluating the changes taking place in the various segments in our health care marketplace. One of the segments that is changing most rapidly and... read more

Randy Pausch died the other day. He was 47 years old.

For those of you not familiar with Randy’s story, he was a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and told he would have... read more

It’s hard to believe that we’re already nearing the half-way point for 2008. We trust that your strategic plans are moving ahead full-throttle and you are on your way toward achieving the goals you have set both for yourself and your... read more

Over the past several months we’ve talked about many of the business aspects we believe are required to operate successfully in the health care system of tomorrow.

These topics included some of the basic business fundamentals... read more

In his book “The World is Flat”, Thomas Friedman provides a dramatic documentary around how rapidly the world is changing. One thing is made perfectly (and frighteningly) clear throughout his writing; the world is changing at a breakneck... read more

We’ve used this title from a book by Rick Page frequently over the years to emphasize the importance of the need for having a defined strategy to help guide organizations in making decisions and determining their direction. We’ve always... read more

One of the key ideas we try to get across in our work with clients is our belief that having a clear definition of who you are and what you do can be a key predictor of the success of any organization or project. Especially in health care, having... read more

In his book, Only the Paranoid Survive, former Intel CEO Andy Grove put forward the argument that every business, organization, and individual will encounter “strategic inflection points” throughout their existence that can impact their... read more

We wish you much success and growth in the year ahead.

Last year a friend of ours introduced us to the “Blue Ocean” way of thinking. We always try to help clients think out of the box as they develop their strategies in a... read more

Happy Holidays to everyone. And we wish you a fulfilling and prosperous new year.

In this newsletter we’ll be using an article recently published in the Harvard Business Review as a framework to discuss some of the traits that... read more

Welcome to Collaboration Health Care’s November, 2007 newsletter. We’ll be using this newsletter as one means to communicate news, views, opinions, and comments to help encourage dialogue to facilitate change within our health care... read more