Healthcare Industry Outlook 2006

Non-Traditional Healthcare Delivery in the 21st Century

For the past six years, Ingram’s Magazine has been hosting a series of economic assemblies known collectively as the “Industry Outlook.” These assemblies have covered everything from agribusiness to higher education and another dozen or so industries in between.

The goal of the Industry Outlook has been to present a wide-ranging regional report on the state of a given industry. This year, with our healthcare Industry Outlook, we decided to do something a little different. We gathered a more intimate group of highly knowledgeable players in healthcare primarily from the independent healthcare sector and invited them to help us redesign the industry, at least to the degree it could be redesigned on a local level. No industry in America functions as awkwardly as healthcare. Although the nation’s hospitals provide the world’s best care, they are forced to administer that care through the world’s most unwieldy system, a public-private hybrid that evokes the phrase “Rube Goldberg” for those with memory enough to know what that phrase means.

Chairing the event was Jim Mirabile, MD, whose CosMETIC firm co-sponsored the event.