INTRODUCTION | All the elements are there. Whether we call it the real-time healthcare system of the future or the emerging system of health, the thousand pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle are lying on the table before us. It’s a matter of everybody working on it together, collaborating and partnering to create an interlocking system of health that is sustainable, quality-and-data-driven, consumer-centric, accessible, affordable and equitable. It must be value-based and social-determinants-of-health-based.

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Collaboration and partnership are key to success because nobody can do this alone and everybody’s at the table. Yes, there are disruptors from the outside who hold some puzzle pieces, but disruption from the inside is more important. The old analogy of having one foot in one canoe and the other in another canoe is tired. Change agents must navigate a tension and ambiguity that arise from having to compete with and disrupt their own organizations. “Sometimes we compete and sometimes we partner,” says Optum’s Mitch Morris, MD, in encapsulating the new order.

Not a week goes by without news about big-tech partnerships in healthcare involving Apple, Amazon, Google and others. Retail giants like CVS, Walgreens and Walmart have become primary-care players. Intermountain has teamed with other health systems to create generic drug firm Civica RX. Providence is partnering with OneMedical. Mayo Clinic with Medically Home.

Kevin Croston Dick Flanigan Nick Frenzer Phil Lindemann Mitch Morris Craig Samitt Marcus Shipley