Significant transitional challenges lie immediately ahead for healthcare delivery organizations to meet the “better care at lower cost” mandate of healthcare reform. In many cases, delivery systems will need to develop a new business model, challenging base assumptions, and rethinking both the care they deliver and how they deliver it.

A handful of healthcare systems have already started on this path. They’re using evidence-based medicine to deliver higher quality, lower cost outcomes. These become the basis for a differentiated economic and clinical value proposition that fuels growth. And they are easily meeting a lower cost mandate through dramatic reductions in avoidable complications, medication errors, unnecessary tests, and length-of-stay, totaling up to $70 million annually in some systems.