Dr. Richard Reece on vertical vs. lateral health care thinkers (via Kevin MD):

Vertical thinkers dig deeper and deeper holes across the health care landscape. At the bottom of each hole, you will find a world class expert. The only problem is the various vertical holes don’t connect. One specialist may not know what the other specialist is doing and may have no means of communicating with him/her colleagues or hospitals.

The lateral thinker, on other hand, roams the countryside looking for connections, seeking ways to put things together into an integrated whole, searching for a system blending relationships and eliminating care gaps, and hunting for self-organizing information platforms and disruptive innovations that lower costs and that work outside traditional specialty silos.

Read his very interesting (and spot-on) post.  It’s amazing how many of our problems we could solve with a proper focus on primary care.

This entry is filed under Health Care Transformation.