title: Watching the falling barometer.
abstract: How can physician executives create a vision, a strategy, in the face of such overwhelming forces for change? The answer has two pieces. The first is the Weather Channel: scanning the future for warning, for opportunities, for new business possibilities. The second leads us to such questions as: What is your situation? Financially? In market terms? It leads us, as well, back to the question: For you and your institution, what is your reason for being in this business? In other words, what is your foundation? If you can become clear about who you are and what you are here for in the long run, and match that with some sense of the technologies and the political and financial pressures headed your way, then you can begin to create a vision of a future that works for you. In the coming years, we will begin to create entire new ways of doing health care, new roles for hospitals, new types of medicine--and the time to begin the creation is now. If you wait until the hurricane hits, it will be too late.
authors.affiliation: bbear@well.com
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Flower
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000639:trends*; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D009936:Organizational Innovation; D010934:Planning Techniques