Leading Change in Health Care: Building a Viable System for Today and Tomorrow

Ian Morrison

216 pages, softcover, 6" x 9"
AHA Order Number: 108107
ISBN: 978-1-55648-383-7
Member Price: $32.00
Non-member Price: $36.00

An updated collection of short essays written by Ian Morrison: The essays tell important stories that address the current environment and are organized around overarching themes on how to build viable systems in health care finance and delivery. Readers will find Morrison's wry observations and wicked ideas entertaining, irreverent, thoughtful, and inspiring. His analysis offers lively starting points for provocative and memorable board room discussions.

The essays were written for Hospitals & Health Networks (H&HN) magazine and its online editions, H&HN Weekly and H&HN Daily and cover a decade's worth of health care change, with sensitivity to our current reform environment. The chapters are organized into overarching themes that address the need for structural change in the way health care is delivered and financed.

Each essay encourages you to question the status quo and to look at the details of our delivery system a bit differently. They will inspire you to renew the ideals and leadership commitments you set for yourself. You and your board will find plenty to chuckle about as Ian skewers the often painful logic and convoluted thinking behind our national health care policies. Yet, he manages to introduce original thinking on alternative management practices, policy analysis, and solutions to problems that vex health care leaders every day.

Reader Comments

"It must take a Scottish-Canadian-Californian to understand our health care system, because no one explains it better or with more style."
— Drew E. Altman, Ph.D., President and CEO, Kaiser Family Foundation, Menlo Park, CA

"Morrison is an original thinker who is eloquent, provocative, witty, and stimulating—and my favorite futurist. There is much here that you will not find anywhere else."
— Humphrey Taylor, Chairman, Harris Poll, New York, NY

"Ian Morrison has an unerring ability to crystallize the big, hairy, complex issues in health care in a clear, straightforward way. Oh, and he's devastatingly funny."
— Mark D. Smith, M.D., MBA, President and CEO, California Healthcare Foundation, Oakland, CA

"Ian Morrison's astute insights into contemporary health policy issues are conveyed in a highly readable—and often hilarious—form."
— Peggy O'Kane, President and CEO, National Committee for Quality Assurance, Washington, DC

"...an invaluable resource, asking us to look in the mirror to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of our current system in a wise, thoughtful, disarming, and entertaining way."
— Tom Priselac, President and CEO, Cedars-Sinai Health System, Los Angeles, CA

"...a must-read for policy wonks who need to explain health policy to normal people, and valuable to the rest of us who think something important might be going on in health care but aren't sure what....a 'half joking, full serious' skewer that makes abstract concepts memorable, human, and humorous."
— David Cochran, M.D., President and CEO, Vermont Information Technology Leaders, Inc., Montpelier, VT

"...gives us profound insights into our dysfunctional health 'system' with wit, charm, and a useful disregard for American exceptionalism....smartly balances his empathy with the worries expressed by health care purchasers and patients with an expert's understanding of the business, clinical, and cultural forces that make it so hard to transform the system."
— David Lansky, Ph.D., President and CEO, Pacific Business Group on Health, San Francisco, CA

"...points out our follies and inconsistencies with humor, but always with a message that the work of health care leaders is important."
— Bill Noce, Chair, St. Joseph Health System, Orange, CA

About the Author

Ian Morrison is an internationally known author, consultant, and futurist specializing in long-term forecasting and planning, with a particular emphasis on health care and the changing business environment. He combines research and consulting skills with humor to help public and private organizations plan their longer-term future. Morrison has written, lectured, and consulted on a wide variety of forecasting, strategy, and health care topics for government, industry, and nonprofit organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia.