Ongoing financial challenges. A shifting payment and regulatory landscape. Growing staffing shortages. A rocky shift into value-based contracting. The emergence of all sorts of non-traditional “disruptor” organizations is changing the dynamics of survival for traditional bricks-and-mortar health systems. Intensifying cyberthreats. The policy and operating landscape for the senior leaders of hospitals, medical groups, and health systems is more challenging right now than it has ever been. Yet there is hope, in the context of blossoming innovation of all kinds, advancing technology, and a growing effort on the part of provider leaders to finally shift massively towards value over volume in U.S. healthcare. And thus, in the words of Charles Dickens in the opening of his 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
—The Editors of Healthcare Innovation