Prepare for the Economic Recovery with a Global Healthcare Strategy

Companies can't just focus on cutting costs...your competitors are already thinking about the next expansion.

How many times have you been exhorted to 'think out side the box.' After this 'most recent discomfort' of the economic cycle has churned through, there may be even more boxes to think about.

Vijay Govindaragan at Tuck School of Business advocates thinking about two more boxes of innovation. The first box we are all familiar with: sales margins go down, so you cut costs. This is the box that most everyone is focusing on now. The problem with this tunnel vision is that expansion always follows recession...and lasts longer and is more robust than the recession.

But the recession we are in has changed the competitive landscape - there are new winners and new losers. So during the recession is the best time to prepare for the expansion, as assets and talent are cheaper and more available.

The second box deals with two types of innovation - adjacency innovation, which is a little less risky because you are innovating in a business area adjacent to your existing core business, and breakout innovation, where you go multiple steps outside your core business. During a recession, when serious mistakes cannot be made, breakout innovations tend to ignored, even though the high risk may result in a high reward.

The third box is essentially creating your company's future in 2025. But while you may not actually plan for the year 2025, you can prepare for it.

If your executive staff is not quite ready for gaining consensus on the big, nonlinear shifts that will impact the business, why not get some practice and consider implementing an adjacency innovation in box number two?

Implementing a global healthcare option plan that co-exists with existing healthcare benefits may be one of the highest return/low risk programs for corporate HR to consider. Consider the upside potential of a relationship with premier Indian super specialty hospitals:

• As a self insured corporation, you already have the necessary infrastructure to manage healthcare benefits
• It is doubtful that you are conveniently located near a US center of healthcare excellence. Your employees will now have access to 'world class' medical outcomes at exceptional, high practice volume healthcare facilities.
  
• Offering India as an option for a select number of very expensive orthopedic, cardiovascular, bariatric and bone marrow transplant will significantly reduce healthcare benefit costs
  
• Your company's willingness to import global healthcare competition can be a wake up call for the local hospitals to reconsider their pricing models...just as global competition has forced you to do for many, many years
• After the first employee/patient returns, word-of-mouth marketing of the experience typically drives acceptance of the program at a surprising rate.

So when the expansion does roll around, why not take some innovative steps to offer higher value, lower costs benefits than your competitors...so you can remain on the winners list.