Consumer-driven healthcare. It is difficult now to read a newspaper article about health reform, or white paper on healthcare economics, without tripping over the word "consumer" at least half-a-dozen times right at the top. Even congressmen use the word, and depending on your industry, you might say "patient-centered" (a doctor) or "employee-focused" (a CEO). The idea here is one and the same. Dr. Herzlinger coined and began promoting the term "consumer-driven health care" in her 1997 book, Market-Driven Health Care. Among the thought leaders in this list, hers is a premier voice. Also in the 1990's, Herzlinger wrote of "focused-factories," describing integrated teams of providers who would be organized around a disease. Aspects of this concept are present in Christensen's "solution shops." Among Herzlinger's several books, Who Killed Healthcare? was selected as one of ten books "that changed the debate" by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She has received the Pioneer in Health Economics award from Consumers’ for Health Care Choices and is distinguished as the first woman to be tenured, or given a chair, at HBS. 

To Managed Care on "focused factories":

"I use the term 'factory' purposefully to be provocative. The people in the factories made the changes. They figured out, and continually figure out, how to improve the production process. It's not a top-down process, it's an organic process that's led by the people who actually do the work. An HMO is a top-down process. That's not the lesson from the American economy. The lesson is it's bottom-up. It's the people who actually deliver the services who will re-create the services."