Elizabeth Teisberg

Services account for more than 80 percent of the U.S. GDP and more than 80 percent of the U.S. labor force works in service industries. Despite the sector’s dominance, innovations that radically redefine service delivery are relatively rare. Elizabeth Teisberg – who spent four years tracking innovations in health care – explores an emerging service model designed to help organizations discover new efficiencies, solve problems and innovate to create value for them and their customers. Giving managers a systematic way to question basic assumptions about how a service is defined and delivered, she empowers them to overcome the “that’s not how we do it” mentality, and enables their organizations to achieve dramatically better results.

Since the publication of “Redefining Health Care,” (HBR Press, 2006), there continues to be strong interest in how to actually implement the principles of value-based health care delivery in practice. From large multi-hospital providers, to small group practices, health plans and employers, many organizations are already transforming their models of care – and are succeeding. Elizabeth Teisberg presents the fundamental principles of value-based health care delivery and closely examines the organizations putting those principles into practice – providing a rich understanding of how to improve patient outcomes without raising costs.

The issues facing us in health care today are as urgent as they are complex. Escalating costs, inconsistent quality, uneven access, and devastating pandemics are all pressing problems that elude easy answers. A key underlying cause of these challenges lies in the disjointed structure of the U.S. health care system – an industry that places employers in the middle of health benefits decisions and payments, insulates consumers from the consequences of their lifestyle and treatment choices, and limits true competition among the suppliers of health care products and services. Just about everyone agrees that we need to reform health care, but few agree on how to do it. Elizabeth Teisberg explores the implications and impact of value-based health care reform – a system that puts the patient at the center – and how businesses are aligning to improve the well-being of their employees without sacrificing their bottom-line.