Fostering Innovation

How the Education Sector Can Learn from Health Care

Abstract

In recent years, the health care industry has experienced a series of “disruptive innovations,” a term coined by Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen, that have elevated the roles of non-physician providers, such as nurse practitioners. Nurse practitioners provide high- quality primary and preventive care in retail-based settings such as convenient care clinics and in community settings, such as nurse-managed health centers. There are now 2,100 types of these clinics around the country, and the number is growing. The evolution of the nurse practitioner role dates back to 1968, at the beginning of a major primary care physician shortage that continues to this day. The health care system needed a new type of provider who could provide accessible, affordable, quality care. Straying from the standard physician model of care and introducing a new type of health care provider was not without its challenges. In fact, the progress took close to 40 years. During the past 20 years of this effort, I have had the pleasure of being involved in these new health care model creations while at the same time helping to position nurse practitioners as essential primary care providers with the ability to practice to the full extent of their education. This role advancement has fought major opposition from organized medicine, requiring more than 300 state and national law changes. Challenging the status quo is never easy, despite the benefits it could offer all involved. In the case of the traditional health care sector, concerns arose due to perceived loss of control and general aversion to change and new ways of thinking, despite the challenges facing the industry. The good news is that nurse practitioners today are mainstream primary care providers and close to 200,000 are practicing not just in retail and nurse-led clinics but in many diverse health care settings. As a health care advocate who has worked in most states and on Capitol Hill, I see a correlation with the struggles in health care and the ability to advance our educational system in unique ways. When I observe politics in education, I see that funding and legal mechanisms dictate engagement within the industry, hindering educators’ ability to make progress in innovation and new ways of thinking. The regulations for education are tighter than those for health care, whether we are talking about public, charter, cyber charter, private or contract schools. Health care tends to be state regulated, as compared with education, which in many cases is regulated at the community level. But in this era of innovation, we must challenge traditional educational models to ensure that the United States remains competitive.