Today, healthcare faces juxtaposing forces. It relies on a workforce that views quality healthcare as a right and the profession as a vocational calling, while it faces pressures to reduce costs, optimise performance and deliver care as efficiently as possible.

And yet in the battle to transform healthcare and deliver the Quadruple Aim of value-based care, the poles arguing that healthcare should or should not be considered a business have, perhaps, missed a middle ground possibility. That is that there is an opportunity for healthcare to operate as a 'responsible business' which combines the best of both worlds: clinical expertise with operational excellence. The challenge, of course, is how to bring together two worlds in order to create modern healthcare systems that are both fit for purpose and purposeful.

Dawn Bruce, Services & Solutions Delivery Lead, Philips explains why this disruptive approach has merit:

"Business and healthcare have long had an uneasy relationship but a modern, innovative approach to healthcare transformation doesn’t have to be the ruthless commercialization of care. Instead, the adoption of effective business models and business practices can realise the best of organisational and operational strategy and fuse it with the high practice standards of those passionate about the Hippocratic Oath. Clinical professionals should absolutely be focusing their time on the medicine part but hospital operations have to be run like a business."

Over the past 10 years, multinational companies have made important changes to their corporate social responsibility  policy. The emergence of responsible business can therefore be seen as much an opportunity for healthcare transformation as digitisation and new technologies are. In fact, as healthcare organisations increasingly look to strategic business partners in order to share risk, optimise care delivery and create value, it becomes clear that all businesses are not created equal and for purposeful performance.

"Imitation is the greatest form of flattery" and, according to Dawn Bruce, clever borrowing from responsible business starts by considering impact; working out where and what innovative approaches proven to work in business will deliver the most value. To share and reapply, she advises:

1. Start in operations, the control centre of any hospital
2. Adopt a holistic, integrated approach fusing people, process and technology
3. Prioritise people
4. Think Disney and innovate the customer experience
5. View leadership as a cross-functional art and develop servant leaders
6. Adopt highly effective business processes including Lean, Agile as well as systems thinking and design thinking
7. Embrace technology and drive for interoperability but learn from business that true success relies on a cultural, rather than a technical shift

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