Psychology of Business Economincs

Why Hospitals Are Like Taxis Fighting the Uber of Healthcare

06/29/2015

Could you smell it in Cleveland, Carson City or Cape Cod?

The stench filled the air in Paris, as taxi drivers burned tires to protest Uber.

Having paid hundreds of thousands of Euros for their taxi permits, the drivers have been disrupted and they don’t like it.

Will hospital administrators in Cleveland, Carson City and Cape Cod soon be burning Press Ganey surveys in the street, protesting outpatient and facility-free healthcare?

As technology from telemedicine to home diagnosis to freestanding ERs and at home surgery centers (think I’m kidding?) makes most of the hospital function irrelevant, hospitals’ million to billion dollar sunk costs in bloated and outmoded facilities will be their equivalent of taxi licenses. They will push back: The government must stop the future!

Need proof? Look at the hospital industry war against physician owned hospitals. At least they haven’t burned them down . . . yet.

But in the end, they will lose. Change can be delayed, but it can’t be stopped.

The wind of change is blowing your way. Start hedging your bets now. What the hospitals see as alarming, you can see as alluring.

Entrepreneurial physicians and other healthcare providers have three choices in the wind of change. You can be upwind, downwind or in the fire.

Obama wasn’t lying when he said there’d still be choice in healthcare. There are three choices, but only one works for you.

Comment or contact me if you’d like to discuss this post.

Mark F. Weiss



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