U.S. health care reform

Posted 1/18/2010 by Lisa A. Ferguson

I have been interested in the health care industry ever since I was young. For many years, I planned to become a medical doctor. As an undergraduate, I majored in chemistry and minored in psychology. After an internship at a doctor's office, I decided I wanted to go into the business side of health care. It's been an interesting path since then regarding how I finally ended up in that area. First, I decided to get an MBA and majored in finance and operations management, with a minor in accounting. Both my mentor, who was a professor of mine for operations management, and my dad encouraged me to get a PhD and go into academia. After receiving a PhD from Arizona State University in operations management, I spent 10 years teaching full time at a university business school. The last five years were spent focusing on teaching only masters and doctoral students, including some who worked in health care.

Two years ago, I started doing work in health care again. I began writing, with the help of a doctor from South Africa, a strategy and tactics implementation plan for how to significantly improve performance in hospitals. Last fall, I became concerned about what was happening with respect to health care reform in the US. I started working on a paper that proposes a solution that I believe is a win for every person and organization that is affected or is a part of the US health care system. This paper has gone through a number of revisions, first by me without any outside review, followed by changes made based on feedback by some key people I chose to read this paper. I intend to release this paper to the masses soon. However, I will not release it until I feel and think that it is ready. I have chosen not to give in to pressure to release it before key government decisions are made because I don't want to decrease the chances of it having the most significant positive impact. The impact that I desire is to influence key decision-makers in government and businesses to take the actions that will achieve a win for all. This paper is specifically written for those people. I hope that others will be influenced to take action as well. For example, people can write to government or vote or take other actions that would motivate those with the ability to make the appropriate changes take the desired actions.

This paper will be posted on our web site in the guest portal section, along with a bibliography sharing TOC successes in health care. In the registered participants section, there will be reviews written by me of the videos, DVDs and books on TOC in health care.

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