From the HBR comes an inspiring piece about creating a healthcare system that is designed from the ground up:

One, building a hospital is time consuming — it takes around four years in South America — and is capital-intensive. The HDS team decided to eliminate this step and set up the facility in the shells of 23 old buses that were waiting to be disposed off by the city administration. It took just four months to clean out the buses and equip them with water, electricity, drainage, air conditioning, and medical equipment. The hospital has operating rooms, clinical laboratories, a pharmacy, and provides an array of services, from diagnostics to surgery.

Two, instead of investing in equipment, the founding team invited doctors to buy equipment that they could own, use, and maintain. As many as 360 doctors agreed to do so in order to help the sick in their city, and became investors in the hospital.

Three, hospitals usually offer services from fixed locations. The HDS team came up with a modular design that make it easy to move parts of the facility to where the demand is. Medical teams drive to the poorest places in Lima, starting at 8 a.m., and finish after they have seen the last waiting patient.

Finally, most hospitals decide which doctors attend to which patient. The HDS team changed this, allowing patients to choose the physician, the day, and the treatment time so they could act on the recommendations of friends and relatives.

via Peru’s Innovation Drive – Alejandro Ruelas-Gossi – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review.