Restructuring Health Care

J. PHILIP LATHROP is a vice president in the Chicago office of Booz**Allen Health Care, Inc. In his seventeen years with the firm, he has led a broad range of consulting engagements for top management of many of the country's leading hospitals, HMOs, proprietary chains, and professional associations. During the past five years, he has devoted nearly all of his time helping clients develop and implement patient-focused care.

• 1. What's the Big Problem? 2. The Nature of Structural Change. 3. Compartmentalization and Its Discontents: High Cost and Poor Service. 4. Patient Focus Begins with Demand. 5. The Structure of a New Paradigm. 6. Patient Aggregation: From Nursing to Patient Care Centers. 7. Initial Deployment Decisions. 8. Enablers for Change. 9. Does It Work? Epilogue: The Patient-Focused Enterprise.

"Philip Lathrop's book is brilliant and timely, thoughtful, and practical. Regradless of the final shape of health care reform in the U.S., the patient-focused idea can and must be implemented. Bravo!" (Tom Peters, coauthor of In Search of Excellence and author of Liberation Management)