Creating New Health Care Ventures: The Role of Management

by Regina E. Herzlinger

This is a good book for a new medical manager to review. It provides ways to look at our industry from the market side, rather than the professional perspective. Dr. Herzlinger's perspective, given her review and study of the health care industry for nearly a decade, is a useful stimulus for the new physician executive to break out of the traditional clinical perspective of one patient at a time and see the health care market from a broader, more comprehensive point of view. In addition to this alternative perspective, Dr. Herzlinger has summarized critical managerial skills that need to be mastered if a physician executive is to become a competent executive. She offers not only a quick summary of particular management areas, such as marketing and finance, but also useful reading lists at the end of each section for further study in depth. The case studies may be less useful for individual reading. Although they are excellent and well constructed, their utility is best achieved in group discussion with appropriate informed coaches or mentors. Reading the case studies is informative, but the book alone doesn't present them to their full advantage. Physician executives who are in organizations where other like-minded physicians practice and work might find the case studies useful as points of discussion in teams. On the whole, the book will be more useful to a relatively novice physician executive than to one with more experience. The book is designed to give overall guidance and to demonstrate the applicability of specific management skills to new health care opportunities, rather than to provide details about those skills or to teach those skills in depth. The book is, however, well organized and well written, allowing for a quick review for any interested physician executive. It's market-oriented emphasis is an important continuing reminder for all of us.

508 pages, Hardcover

First published November 26, 1991