The U.S. health care crisis is about manpower as well as money. Within the next 15 years, experts predict a shortfall of 800,000 nurses and 200,000 doctors, and the American education system is inadequate to take up the slack. As caregiver supply declines, demand for it will rise. For one thing, there are 80 million baby boomers who will be senior citizens by 2015, and senior citizens suffer a higher incidence of chronic disease. Thanks to improvements in acute care, more of these seniors will survive if they have heart attacks, for example, but those survivors will continue to suffer from chronic heart disease. At the same time, obesity and hypertension are epidemic. “We’re really looking at three different issues that are converging into a perfect storm,” says GE Healthcare Transformation Project Manager Robert Ludlow. “This is an issue that keeps GE’s senior leadership up at night.”
A version of this article appeared in the November 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review.