It’s hard to imagine a more stressed industry than the healthcare provider industry. All healthcare delivery organizations have been facing on-going pressures to raise quality, reduce costs, and increase revenues in an environment of reimbursement constraints, demographic shifts, and accelerating technological change. New types of competition are emerging, including physicians that used to be your best patient referral sources. And now patients are asserting themselves in decision-making, expecting more transparency to clinical and economic data.

It’s easy to get distracted trying to contend with all of the complexities facing healthcare systems. Day-to-day they tend to cover up the one strategic issue almost all healthcare providers must address: how do we improve our operating margin so we can ensure we continue to meet our patient care mission out into a future that looks increasingly more difficult?