Volume XXVll, No. 2
May 2013
The Independent Medical Business Newspaper
The power of partnership Forging a unique local response to local health needs By Charlie Mandile and George Wagner, MD
B
SPECIAL FOCUS: CROSS-SPECIALTY COLLABORATION Page 20
OBESITY to page 10
PAID
By Peter Dehnel, MD
HEALTHFINDERS to page 12
PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE
Strategies for motivating patients
T
he need to actively address obesity reduction— both in the clinic setting and through community initiatives—has reached the “burning platform” stage, to borrow a well-established concept from organizational change literature. “An organizational burning platform exists when maintaining the status quo becomes prohibitively expensive,” says Daryl R. Conner in the business management book “Managing at the Speed of Change.” He adds, “Major change is always costly, but when the present course of action is even more expensive, a burning-platform situation erupts.” The burning platform concept can be aptly applied to the issue of managing obesity. In terms of costs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that the medical care costs of obesity in the United States costs totaled about $147 billion in 2008; the costs for people who are obese were
Detriot Lakes, MN Permit No. 2655
Reducing obesity
etween doctors and their patients lies an insurmountable gap for many people without health insurance. Despite historic health insurance reforms, institutional barriers and a complex system make entry difficult, even for the savviest health care consumers. Even more historic is the alarming burden of chronic disease affecting generations of families across our entire community. HealthFinders Collaborative (HFC) is a free community health center that has shown how to meet local needs for health access and chronic disease management in ways that don’t necessarily rely on new health system reforms. Through a commitment to collaboration, and the motivation to connect the needs of communities with organizations