Kent Bottles: The top 10 health care leadership challenges of today (OK, I listed 12)

One of my favorite health care consultants is Al Burgener of Iowa City.  Al and I worked closely together years ago at the UIHC, and I have used him as a consultant in Grand Rapids, MI, Des Moines, IA, and Bloomington, MN.  Nobody thinks and writes more clearly and creatively about health care reform than Al.  He and I were talking about what the real leadership challenges are today, and we came up with the following list:

1. Making effective use of health information technology, particularly at the community level and across traditional organizational boundaries
2. Improving coordination of care and developing effective “medical home” models
3. Pursuing more efficient and effective chronic disease management approaches
4. Adopting cutting edge clinical quality, outcomes and patient safety initiatives
5. Developing more effective ways of interacting with engaged patients and disease-specific patient groups
6. Integrating comparative effectiveness research and evidence-based best practices into clinical care more quickly, effectively and consistently
7. Adapting clinical delivery system structure and processes to the continuing emergence of genomic medicine/personalized medicine
8. Expanding the use of inter-disciplinary health care teams
9. Developing focused initiatives to eliminate health disparities
10. Bringing about demonstrable improvements in population health status, rather than merely treating disease
11. Developing the capacity to assume and manage financial and clinical risk for defined populations
12. Developing innovative approaches to medical and health professions education that incorporate all of the above.

Do you think we got the list right?  What did we miss?

We also thought the major problem in health care is that “leaders” — whether physicians, administrators, nurses, or others – are largely unaware of the above and/or ill-equipped to think and manage creatively in an environment in which the above are the new imperatives.  How can ICSI bring more attention to the above — with a specific focus on the management competencies required to address these issues — would be a positive contribution.