MULTI-TRILLION DOLLAR U.S. HEALTHCARE TO 2020 GOLD RUSH

Valentine presents an in-depth and forward-looking assessment of the U.S. health-care market with an eye toward business opportunities.

While some may view U.S. health care as a drag on the economy, the author sees the next eight years as nothing short of a gold rush for opportunistic individuals and businesses. Valentine should know; with more than 27 years experience in the global health-care industry, he is CEO of an advisory firm. The author offers thorough analysis, covering such topics as new enabling technologies, legislative drivers, market and industry life cycles, and industry innovations. Valentine provides a wealth of data that would take considerable time to access individually. He includes such statistics as the relative market share of the top five U.S. health insurance companies; medical facilities and services regulated by Certificates of Need broken up by state; and the top 20 U.S. medical groups, multihospital systems and largest senior living providers. There’s also a focus on the pharmaceutical industry: He categorizes the U.S. prescription market by channels of distribution, drug classes and manufacturers. Add to all of this Valentine’s expert evaluation, which illuminates both historical trends and future potential for growth. He enhances the text with an abundance of diagrams, charts and graphs that make the book all the more accessible, such as the diagram of “the interconnected U.S. [health-care] enterprise,” a remarkably lucid depiction of an extremely complex structure. Valentine peppers the text with subheads that define each chunk of information and also serve to signal forthcoming changes. Readers would do well to pay attention to a few statements in particular: “The fundamental shift in how care is viewed and reimbursed will result in provider consolidations and innovations to extract costs and improve patient care and provider profitability.”

Those who pore over Valentine’s well-researched book will be better positioned to take maximum advantage of—and potentially profit from—the changing U.S. health-care market.