Item 2.1 of the Baldrige Criteria asks how you collect and analyze information about four key factors including “early indications of risks or major shifts in technology, health care markets, health care services,” etc. In other words, how do you anticipate the kinds of changes that could transform healthcare and, in the process, radically change how you are providing it?

Clayton M. Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, called this “disruptive innovation,” which is “an unexpected new offering that, through price or quality improvement, turns a market on its head.” He is quoted in an article in the New York Times earlier this year that introduces some of the disruptive innovations that are reshaping healthcare. (“Disruptive Innovation, Applied to Health Care,” Janet Rae-Dupree, NYTimes.com, January 31, 2009)

One such innovation is fixed-fee integrated systems offered by such providers as Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente. Customers make monthly payments to these providers in exchange for “cradle-to-grave health care.” Kaiser’s integrated system cost 22% less than competing systems in 2007, in part because it promotes health and discourages overtreating.

The spiraling healthcare costs that have helped inspire healthcare reform will lead to other disruptive innovations. The question is: Do you have processes in place to recognize these innovations early and prepare for or adopt them? Because if you don’t, the ground will shift and your organization will be scrambling to recover rather than leading healthcare into a new era.

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