Value RX Book

In Value Rx, the consulting duo behind the successful Cracking the Value Code delivers strong, smart medicine for health care organizations. Libert and Giniat (the head of the Pharmaceutical, Biomedical, and Health Services practice of Andersen) open with much the same argument presented in Value Code: To compete and thrive in a field marked by rising costs and declining services, everyone from hospitals and HMOs to pharmaceuticals, suppliers, and drugstore chains must not only nurture but rigorously measure every component of their "organisms". That includes finding the optimal balance between tangibles like physical assets and income statements and such vexing intangibles as human assets, customer satisfaction, and the constant generation and free flow of knowledge. To both bean counters and care providers who say such intangibles can't be reconciled with the bottom line or usefully measured, they provide a diverse array of vivid real-life profiles to the contrary. These run the gamut from the medical-device manufacturer that poured its victories from patent-infringement suits into aggressive R&D, to the order of nuns who shrewdly redesigned their sizable network of health care facilities to maximize both services and margins, to the first HMO to let its doctors make referrals without its authorization--and profit from its newfound popularity among doctors. Other pointed, instructive cases come from huge names like Pfizer, Merck, the Mayo Clinic, and Walgreen's as well as businesses such as the biotech giant Amgen, the Internet medical info leader WebMD, and the large nonprofit HMO Kaiser. Giniat and Libert also provide a four-quadrant asset model that organizations can use to assess their own strengths and weaknesses. And, most astutely, they demonstrate that in this new era, the bottom line and the delivery of quality care are utterly dependent on each other... and that succeeding at both means acknowledging that the business of first-rate health care in the 21st century is, in large part, business. Value Rx is smart, tough, substantial, and progressive--just what the doctor ordered for everyone with a stake in keeping America well. --Timothy Murphy Read More