Strategy

There is a home for everyone in public health. And conversely, every home should have some public health people. Even hospitals benefit from the population perspective - a small but excellent cadre of our colleagues do 'provider public health'. 

All that by way of introduction to an interesting piece by Michael Porter - Mr Strategy himself. Here is a flavour of the way he thinks:

"The second essential strategy question is, “What businesses are we in?” In health care, the traditional answers — that we run a hospital or a department — reflect the legacy structure, not where value is created."

It may seem that only private sector hospitals need strategy. Not so - I can think of many NHS hospitals facing huge strategic choices. University College Hospital in London has, for example, declared its strategy to be world class in neurology and cancer, knowing that it cannot be world class at everything. There are children's hospitals which need to decide whether they can be both local general hospitals and regional specialist hospitals. District hospitals need to decide what portfolio of services can sensibly be provided locally, and what should be relinquished.  And so on. Exciting stuff!