The Business of Healthcare
Essential Lessons for Emerging Healthcare Leaders
Healthcare is a business, and most of the people asked to lead it were never taught how it works. Thirty-four plain-language lessons on how the money flows, how the law constrains and protects, how quality is made, and how leaders earn trust.
The course in healthcare business you never got in training
A clinician can spend an entire career without ever seeing a price, an invoice, or a payment. Then comes the first leadership role, and with it a budget, a team, payer-mix reports, and a CFO asking questions no one in training ever raised. Professionals crossing over from other industries face the opposite problem: they know business, but not the ecosystem of payers, regulators, and clinical cultures that makes healthcare unlike any other field. The Business of Healthcare closes that gap.
Lessons, not lectures
Concise, practical lessons sized for a working professional's schedule, each closing with a summary, Executive Takeaways, and a short list of further reading.
Examples in action
More than one hundred examples show the concepts at work, from a clinic's payer mix to a hospital's governance, in plain language and without footnotes.
Appendices that map the field
The healthcare ecosystem, a glossary of terms and acronyms, the three paths into healthcare leadership, and a curated guide to deeper reading.
Eight parts, one practical primer
The Challenge
Why the United States spends roughly twice what other developed nations spend on healthcare with worse outcomes, the economics behind that market failure, and the volume-to-value shift.
Leading Self and Teams
Self-awareness, the move from peer to leader, and the communication, negotiation, and change-management skills that make teams work.
The Quality Agenda
Zero harm and high-reliability organizations, patient-centered and evidence-based care, population health, and Lean Six Sigma.
The Cost Agenda
Where the money comes from, financial and managerial accounting, finance, and budgeting, built from the ground up for readers without a finance background.
Operations and Execution
Supply chain, access and service design, emergency preparedness, project management, health information, and data analytics and AI.
Growth and Change
Marketing, innovation, human resources and culture, and labor relations.
Constraints
Ethics, health law, professional liability, and healthcare policy.
Leading the Enterprise
Strategy, hospital governance and the medical staff, and leading organizations.
Written for the people who run healthcare next
Clinicians stepping up
Physicians, nurses, and allied health practitioners moving into their first leadership roles, with a budget to own and metrics to answer for.
Administrators rising
Healthcare administrators preparing to advance, who already know the machinery and need the full picture.
Career-changers crossing over
Professionals entering healthcare from other industries who bring the business skills and need the ecosystem.
Students and policymakers
Students of healthcare management, and the policymakers and citizens who want to understand why American healthcare works the way it does.
Edward J. Kroger, MD, JD, MBA
Edward J. Kroger is a physician, attorney, and healthcare executive who has spent nearly fifty years at the intersection of medicine, law, and business. A former board-certified internist, he represented healthcare systems and providers as an attorney for more than thirty years, argued the Texas Medical Peer Review Privilege before the Texas Supreme Court, and serves as Chief Legal Officer of a large nonprofit organization.
He is the founding director of the Master of Science in Healthcare Leadership program at the University of Houston's Bauer College of Business and teaches healthcare business, law, and leadership at the University of Houston, Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business, and the University of Miami.
Bring the business of healthcare to your organization
Edward speaks to health systems, medical groups, boards, associations, and universities — keynotes, board retreats, grand rounds, and executive education built on decades in the field.
Healthcare as a Business
The Business of Healthcare: Essential Lessons
Private Equity and Medical Practice
Strategic Leadership in Healthcare
Governing Under Pressure
Developing Your Philosophy of Leadership
How (Not) to Get Sued for Medical Malpractice
Updates from the author
New editions, corrections, companion materials, and occasional notes on the business of healthcare. A few emails a year, never more.
Let's talk
Speaking, consulting, executive education, and media inquiries — or a question about the book.
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[email protected]