Thursday Edition

dispatches from the new world of work

Amazing!

In our realtime world I love to run across a thoroughly new, well-researched idea that hasn't been reported on. (Or at least hasn't caught my attention).

BusinessWeek has a barnburner of a cover story this week (0925), "What's Really Propping Up the Economy." Long-time, brilliant BW economics reporter Michael Mandel begins, "Since 2001, the healthcare industry has added 1.7 million jobs. The rest of the private sector? None." Paradox: We decry h-care spending—and without it, at one level, we're sunk. Interesting, no?

Speaking of healthcare & "amazing," on another note I remain fully captivated-blown away by the Planetree Alliance; their "patient-centered" acute-care model is more or less (more more than less per me) peerless. "Patient-centered" is no hollow slogan with these folks. Attached is an updated Plantree PowerPoint FYI. Not so incidentally, they are the only acute-care operation (their flagship Griffin Hospital in Derby, CT, that is) to make the "100 best companies to work for" list—7 times running, currently at a robust #4.

Tom Peters posted this on 09/22/06.

Comments

Mandel's assertion that 35-40% of all new jobs in the next 25 years with be in healthcare if the same growth pattern continues, uses the same methodology that ascertains that if David eats 2 hamburgers per day this year and 3 per day next year in 25 years time he'll eating 27 per day.

Then again, if David is eating 27 burgers per day there will be a need for increased expenditure in healthcare.

Posted by Dominic Dirupo at September 23, 2006 8:58 AM

"Healthcare" = avoid IT - [maybe invest in it] - exercise, rest, nutrition, genes.

Posted by sean at September 24, 2006 11:02 AM

This is not exactly on point, but I found this item about Walmart and its move into health care interesting. Here is the link: http://www.gooznews.com/archives/000490.html

Posted by David Jensen at September 24, 2006 7:01 PM

I find it interesting that we take the market environment and try to remove the elasticity factors to make a statement of policy, politics, or academic dialog. Saying that the economy or employment would be zero if it wasnâ€™t for health care is the same thing as saying that employment shrank by 59% from 1970 to 2000, if you did not take into account the service jobs. That makes no sense, is Health Care the next Information Worker? Perhaps in another 5 years, we will realize that jobs are created and lost depending on the demands of the economy. The more interesting aspect might be that instead of long term job transitions (Service Jobs) we will see much more short term transitions (Health Care) in the future.

Posted by RTodd at September 25, 2006 8:09 AM