Future of the Hospital

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Introduction (Excerpts)

Hospitals are an integral part of the health care and safety net infrastructure of the United States. In 2011, U.S. hospitals provided emergency care to 129 million people, treated 526 million people through outpatient care, performed 27 million surgeries, and delivered almost 4 million babies. But in the last few decades, a number of social, economic, technological and epidemiological forces are slowly transforming the care delivery systems as a whole, creating an exciting opportunity for communities to reimagine their hospitals.

The Future of the Hospital thought experiment used game dynamics to produce crowdsourced ideas about the future of community hospitals and, by extension, the health care delivery system in the United States. The game sought to bring together a large, diverse, geographically-dispersed group of players in a conversation about how to reimagine hospitals to meet the health and well-being needs of the 21st century. To spark these ideas, players were first immersed in a video scenario that illustrated how the current hospital model is unsustainable and in need of reinvention. Three predetermined challenges and open game play resulted in thousands of microforecasts generated by hundreds of players.