McKinsey & Company Skip main navigation

Healthcare Systems & Services


Health International


Issue 8, 2009

The partners in McKinsey's Healthcare Payors & Providers Practice have two objectives in Health International: The first is to help improve healthcare systems in Europe while innovating to make them more affordable; second is to convey ideas and initiate discussions—and most important, actions—that promote excellence in healthcare, Europe's leading industry.

Even before the current global economic crisis began, health systems around the world found it challenging to deliver better care with finite resources. Now that GDP growth in most countries is flat or declining, the challenge may soon be even greater. How can health systems continue to improve the quality of care they deliver and increase patients' access to care while capping—or even decreasing—their spending? Issue 8 of Health International can help answer that question.


To request a copy of Health International, please contact us. (Because of limited circulation, we will not be able to send a copy to everyone who requests one.)


Explore previous issues of Health International.

Articles

report | Health International, Issue 8

Bracing for impact: Preparing providers for a spending downturn

This article outlines how healthcare providers can prepare for the anticipated funding shortage through a coordinated set of operational, financial, and structural levers. Operational levers include implementing lean practices and rule-based cost controls such as reviewing pay and nonpay categories. Financial levers include reviewing balance sheets and procurement practices as well reexamining financial forecasts and investment plans. Structural considerations are a mix of joint ventures, vertical integration, and a move away from hospital setting to outpatient and primary settings.

report | Health International, Issue 8

What health systems can learn from Kaiser Permanente

An interview with Hal Wolf, this article describes how Kaiser Permanente delivers high-quality and cost-effective treatment by closely integrating care delivery. One of its senior executives outlines physician incentives, capacity management, how care pathways are developed, and the advantages of having integrated care delivery.

report | Health International, Issue 8

Developing a regional health-system strategy

This article outlines how regional approaches to strategy development can enable health systems around the world to make significant improvements in health care delivery. A number of options are considered including analysing geopolitical boundaries, optimal population base, and natural patient flows. Five questions to address: Why is change necessary? How will the needs of the population evolve? What pathways will meet patients' future needs? What delivery models are needed to support optimal care? Are proposed changes affordable and feasible?

report | Health International, Issue 8

Comparing payor performance to enhance health outcomes

This article outlines a new McKinsey tool that enables payors to identify where their performance is weak, what they can do to improve it, and which peer organizations they can learn from. Health outcomes vary markedly across regions, which often do not correlate to healthcare spending. The payor health index was initially developed to analyze and compare the differences in health outcomes in England and has been adapted for various countries including the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Disease areas included in the tool are diabetes, stroke, cancer, coronary heart disease, and asthma.

report | Health International, Issue 8

How hospitals can respond to increased quality transparency

This article outlines how hospitals can provide better care to patients, strengthen their financial performance, and enhance their competitive positions by taking a holistic approach to quality improvement. The quality of care varies remarkably across countries, and improved care quality can often lower a hospital’s costs. The article provides examples from Germany to illustrate how hospitals are responding to increased performance transparency, as well as the impact that poor quality can have. This is followed by detailed steps hospitals can take to respond to these challenges.

report | Health International, Issue 8

Five strategies to improving primary care

This article describes how easy access to high-quality primary care is a prerequisite for good public health. Although primary care physicians are considered the 'face' of health systems, most countries have found it difficult to deliver good primary care. Five strategies can be used—alone or in combination—to improve the delivery of primary care: Increase competition among primary-care physicians, tighten their contracting and reimbursement mechanisms, strengthen their performance-management systems, improve their operating models, and increase the integration of primary care with secondary care and social care.

report | Health International, Issue 8

Why Americans pay more for healthcare

This article outlines how and why the United States spends more on healthcare than comparable countries do and more than its wealth would suggest. Although the United States has some of the best hospitals in the world, it lags behind other OECD countries on a number of outcome measures such as life expectancy and infant mortality. Reasons are not as apparent as diseases related to healthcare costs such as obesity, but they are directly linked to the country's shift from inpatient to outpatient care settings as well as high drug, health administration, and insurance costs.

Contact

To request a print copy of Health International, please contact us.

Contact