Change in the marketplace cannot be stopped and, therefore, organizational development should not only reflect what is happening today but also prepare each organization to appropriately identify emerging changes in market conditions to best benefit from the opportunities for proper management and growth through change or account management.

This article reviews past and current trends in market changes to encourage those involved in prescribing, paying for, or developing drugs, devices, or diagnostic products to embrace the need to adapt to changes in the healthcare marketplace. Established training methods have delivered high return on investment performance during the past decade for various healthcare organizations and manufacturers. The need for training and for developing capability in healthcare organizations remains timely and perhaps even greater today than in the past.

Training for Market Changes

Many market changes or shifts in the US healthcare marketplace since the last World War in the 1950s have required retraining or updated education on a new environment toward patient care management. In the current economic state of tight budgets and the emphasis on return on investment for every dollar spent, it is natural for organizations to resist the notion of having to adapt to yet another change in course occurring in the US healthcare system.

And yet, as the need to positively address organizational development with applied training programs is mounting, and change in healthcare has slowly begun to take place, every healthcare organization is more or less exposed to the consequences of those changes, depending on its product portfolio or other variables directly related to market conditions.

From the perspective of personnel training and development needs, if an organization relies on only an immediate, needs-based approach to change or regards healthcare reform as a matter in the distant future, how will organizational development be determined when change is here, and it is clearly time to start training for that change?

The following brief review of market changes over the years establishes the case for decision makers in healthcare of the need to address the new reality that highlights the impetus for training for the emerging changes in the healthcare marketplace.

Transitions through Government Initiatives in Healthcare

Approximately 30 years after the economic crises brought on by the Great Depression, the Social Security Act of 1965 positioned the US government back at the forefront of healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid not only made the US government a purchaser of healthcare, they also placed the cost of healthcare under public scrutiny, as healthcare itself became an increasingly larger part of the gross domestic product.

If Social Security set the stage for managed care, the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, signed by then-president Nixon, opened a viable economic stream for the development of the managed healthcare marketplace. However, it was not until the 1980s that significant insurance models were developed and truly became a part of the American lexicon.

To this day there remains a lack of consensus among healthcare stakeholders about some of the key concepts embedded in a managed care approach to care, such as a “system of care,” “highest quality care,” and “cost-effective and cost-efficient healthcare.” Such private-sector transitions in the way the “business of healthcare” was conducted were enabled by government regulation over a period of years; these new regulations required education and training for healthcare manufacturer sales personnel and other healthcare stakeholders to be in the most effective position to respond to market opportunities as they developed.