Applying New Disruptive Power to an Old Problem: How Innovative Entrepreneurialism is Helping to Fix Health Care

Abstract

Summary

Disruptive innovation helps social innovators and entrepreneurs to breathe new life into old ideas. Proven business models, products and services draw value from being reliable, established and consistent. But our needs as consumers and priorities as individuals evolve over time, typically triggering a market response. In some cases, however, a more substantial push is needed to create meaningful change in an industry. Health care is an industry that has, for many Americans, ceased to be practically useful, because of issues related to cost and access. On the other hand, it is a service that we all need; even pediatricians’ children get ear infections on a weekend and would, prior to the advent of retail-based health care, typically wind up in the emergency room.

The retail-based convenient care clinic industry meets consumers’ demands because it offers low out-of-pocket cost and high clinical quality relative to its counterparts and because the practitioners work where people shop — a retail clinic can be found within a ten-minute drive of one-third of the U.S. population. Retail care is a disruptive innovation because it successfully reconceptualizes the elements of a well-established system that were failing to meet the needs and expectations of a subset of users. The retail-based clinic movement has taken hold, drawing substantial consumer support and growing quickly. Resolution of our ongoing health care crisis will require similar entrepreneurial creativity and vigor with respect to many other aspects of the system.