With just eleven months to go before the Value-Based Purchasing component of the Affordable Care Act is scheduled to go into effect, it is an auspicious time to consider how health care providers, and hospitals specifically, plan to successfully navigate the adaptive change to come.  The delivery of health care is unique, complex, and currently fragmented.  Over the past thirty years, no other industry has experienced such a massive infusion of technological advances while at the same time functioning within a culture that has slowly and methodically evolved over the past century.  The evolutionary pace of health care culture is about to be shocked into an entirely new reality.  One that will inevitably require health care leadership to adopt a new, innovative perspective as to the delivery of their services.

First, a bit on the details of the coming changes.  The concept of Value-Based Purchasing is that the buyers of…