The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care.

The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care. By Clayton M Christensen, with Jerome H. Grossman and Jason Hwang. McGraw-Hill, 492 pages. $32.95.

Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor who has regularly trained his gaze on innovation, has a new

In his introduction, Christensen outlines the sad--or perhaps more appropriately, "terrifying"--state of U.S. health care: it's gobbling up a higher and higher percentage of gross domestic product as costs rise more steeply than other sectors. Governments and corporations are increasingly unable to meet the projected tab for retiree healthcare and the economic model is out of whack: doctors and hospitals, which are paid for tests and visits regardless of patient need, are financially encouraged to order more.

While much dialogue centers around paying for future costs, the book, written with a pair of prominent health-care specialists, focuses on how to pare costs and boost the quality and accessibility of current care. It seeks to provide a common language, the author writes, to rooms full of specialists who "talk past each other" as they focus narrowly on their own concerns. "Disruptive innovation," which has transformed industries like computers and automobiles, he says, is the key. Indeed, "today's health-care industry screams for disruption," he writes.

Successful change won't be piecemeal in nature, but will involve creation of entire new networks, Christensen believes. "Disruptive business models such as value-adding process clinics, retail clinics and facilitated networks must be married with disruptive innovation in insurance and reimbursement in order to reap the full impact in cost and accessibility." Employers must also play a more proactive role in establishing this new value network.

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This important book tackles root causes of the crisis: the hospital business model, physician-practice business model, care of chronic diseases and more. Lucidly written and smartly conceived, it provides insightful prescriptions for alleviating one of our nation's biggest headaches.

Jeffrey Marshall is a writer and reviewer and the former editor-in-chief of Financial Executive.