Relentless Health Value

There is a land grab going on right now, the likes of which the health care industry hasn’t seen before—at least in our generation. Spoiler alert: There’s a whole episode of Relentless Health Value coming up on the impact of the Teladoc-Livongo hookup. And that is totally relevant to the point I’m about to make. But let me just start with a little bit of background: American patients—let’s get real here—have no more money to spend on health care every year. Really. I mean, you look to employers. The government? Who knows? But let’s just say for the purposes of this discussion that what’s going on right now is a zero-sum game—that the dollars in the system every year are the dollars in the system, and if you want to increase your revenue as any given health care stakeholder, you’ve got to take those dollars from somebody else. Alright … now consider this: Previously, if a health system, say, were going to make a list of their competitors, they’d probably list the health system down the street, maybe the one in