Healthcare providers hoping to meet the better-care-at-lower-cost mandate of healthcare reform are going to have to develop a new business model, rethinking assumptions about the care they provide and how it is managed. In their article Kick-Start Your Management Team to Achieve Transformational Change, published February 16, 2010 in HFMA’s online newsletter, Strategic Financial Planning, authors Rita E. Numerof, Ph.D., President, and Bill Ott, M.B.A., Senior Consultant, share their perspective on what it will take to be successful in today’s challenging healthcare marketplace.

The authors point out that the kind of fundamental changes in performance that will be required by healthcare reform depend on the ongoing efforts of capable managers to deploy and integrate people and financial resources into carefully redesigned work processes. For many organizations, these require competencies that don’t exist at the needed levels to successfully adapt to these new market requirements. They outline just what competencies are needed, and a “kick-start” plan for ratcheting up organizational performance to get there.