Final thoughts on Service Business Model Innovation, our recently published book chapter

As we been for a few weeks, M2HCC authored a chapter entitled “Essential Characteristics of Service Business Model Innovation in Healthcare: A Case-Study Approach” in Service Business Model Innovation in Healthcare and Hospital Management published by Springer. Today we share our final thoughts on the lessons we feature in the book chapter.

Now, and increasingly in the future, a health care organization must be concerned about the quality of care a patient receives from other providers as a part of accountable care. Innovation that leads to improved performance requires focusing on the role of cooperation and trust in changing both processes and resources required to deliver value to customers.

Lessons in building trust, cooperation and leadership
The case studies clearly show trust, leadership, and cooperation are the pillars of innovation. In talking with leaders at Baylor Scott & White Health, BJC HealthCare, Massachusetts General Physician Organization, and Sutter Health and the Sutter Medical Network several common lessons emerged for successful health care service innovation.

Practical advice for health care service innovation
1. Attain commitment from leaders. A commitment from top leadership on the vision for change was a suggestion from Sutter Health. Commitment from top leadership to ensure proper resourcing was also a key component at BJC.

2. Find a way to collaborate. BJC, MGPO and Sutter all discussed collaborating on the creation of common clinical goals and provided specific examples on processes they used.

3. Build better quality measures. BJC and Sutter both discussed processes for designing meaningful projects that were clinically driven in order to improve quality.

4. Change the mentality. While changing the mentality of clinicians and staff was a common theme from all four of the case studies presented, two cases, BSWH and MGPO, specifically addressed changing the mentality in a way that focused on the external marketplace.

5. Get results. While results certainly matter to all of the organizations that served as case studies, BJC specifically explained the usefulness of getting results in helping to build trust and cooperation. BSWH used results as a way to offer transparency of price and quality to health care purchasers.

One final lesson: Innovation in health care must be “clinician-forward”
In addition to the key skills of trust, cooperation and leadership, the four case studies M2 wrote identified another condition necessary for service business model innovation in health care, that is, the need to be “clinician-forward,” which we define as reflecting or elevating the mindset and experience of health care clinicians without being exclusive of other inputs or opinions from those not specifically trained in medicine or other health care professions that diagnose and treat patients. In every case, the innovation in their health care service business model was not just about changing processes and resources, but also about achieving meaningful improvements for patients, their families and the clinicians and staff that serve them and their communities. Trust, cooperation and leadership were not just tools the organizations used, but were in fact, the very foundation of the innovative health care service business models they created.