WHERE DOES IT HURT?

An eye-opening tour of the sprawling and wasteful healthcare industry, and a plan for modernizing and reinvigorating the broken system.

Where else but the doctor’s office do you have to fill out a form on a clipboard? Have you ever noticed that the bills you receive from the hospital are almost unintelligible, except for the frightfully high dollar numbers at the bottom? And why is it that when you go to Starbucks or a chain restaurant, you get a wide range of choices and friendly service, while in health care… not so much?

In the last twenty years, our consumer economy has undergone a revolution in technology, efficiency and consumer service. Yet healthcare appears to have missed it. This backwardness is disastrous for our health—and our economy. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Athenahealth co-founder and CEO Jonathan Bush leads readers through the underbelly of the sprawling and wasteful industry while reflecting on his own journey from ambulance driver to CEO. He outlines the steps necessary to modernize and invigorate health care and to reinstate the sanctity of the physician-patient experience. The key, he writes, is innovation. A host of new entrepreneurial businesses must storm the sclerotic market and offer patients new choices and efficiencies. This changing of the guard, he argues, will topple many of the old players, including giant insurance companies and research hospitals. Bush presents a number of innovative ideas, including:

· Using technologies and ideas borrowed from Apple to provide immediate emergency care.
· Adopting the infrastructures of large organizations such as the U.S. Army and Macy’s.
· Creating competition among health care providers so that customers can have clearer choices.

Drawing on these ideas and more, Bush shows readers this entrepreneurial revolution has begun and where health care can go from here.

Jonathan Bush is the CEO and co-founder of Athenahealth. A nephew and cousin of two American presidents, he started as an ambulance driver in New Orleans, and he later enlisted in the Army during Desert Storm and was trained as a medic.