A Different Future Part II – Looming changes and new aliances

Imagine for a moment that you are a person of means living in England in the early 1700’s. If you wanted to buy, for example, china dinner plates, you went to the shop (and probably home) of a master craftsman and he and his relatively small team made your plates to order. It was a slow and expensive process available to only a few people. One hundred years later plates of similar style and quality were produced in a factory by the hundreds at a much lower cost. The industrial revolution drove those changes and I believe that healthcare is on the verge of a similar revolution. In fact, in many other parts of the country, it has already started. Like the master craftsmen of the early 18th century, physicians have, for 60 years, been a part of a large cottage industry. Doctors practiced alone or in small groups. That... continue reading...