Marengere Health

Innovation and Enterprise

health

Looking at change in Canadian health care? You're looking at the right person. It's called the "bleeding edge," and it'll make you or break you.

Make you: CBI Health Group, Lasik MD, Gamma-Dynacare, We Care. They took an innovative idea, found an opportunity in which to apply it, commercialized it, and rolled the dice. They're a few of the winners.

Break you: Reversal of fortune can occur with

  • The absolute and immediate regulatory power of governments,
  • The influence of national medical, nursing, and allied health professional associations (and their provincial counterparts),
  • The continuing development of law in this area, and
  • The pervasive national sentiment that 1) Canadian medicare is comprehensive, 2) It is both working but, at the same time, can be made-to-work, and 3) Private delivery is bad.

The high return imperative of the above conditions is not always met.

But entry remains enticing. Demand is considered insatiable. People at the high end of the socio-economic spectrum tend to reward themselves with consumption of quality-of-life health services, and the discovery of new pathologies with corresponding development of technologies to both diagnose and treat them drives demand upward.

Furthermore, consumption is driven by the supply of providers and facilites, as well as the ability of third parties to pay. If you build it they will come, as long as they – or preferably someone else – can pay.

But it's not all that easy. Home care service providers, for example, have had their volume and prices determined by government. Horizontal integration has also been required resulting in low end activities – which are also administratively- and organizationally-heavy – being subsidized by high ones. It can be difficult to increase the proportion of sales of the high end services without expensive promotion to the private – and limited – market.

But, then again, who won't pay to no longer have glasses hanging off their nose and ears (as long as the risk is not atypically high)?

The Canadian private-public debate is neither relevant or solvable, and too broad to present as a context for enterprising. Each opportunity or organization must be examined in order to both evaluate its potential and plan its (continuing) success.

The question, as always, is where and how to proceed. Knowledge and experience can inform those decisions and both avoid costly mistakes and maximize return.

Darry Marengere can apply his history of enterprising, knowledge of health sciences and business management, and experience in leadership to the relevant stage of your venture: Idea, plan, launching, expanding, struggling, continuously improving. He can also play a variety of roles: ones of consulting, contract, governance, equity.

The stool of enterprising has three legs. Optimize your base of support by contacting Darry today.