Why ABL Healthcare Round Tables are Reporting Record Growth

Just five months into 2009, the Adaptive Business Leaders Organization has experienced a record number of new members in our ABL Healthcare Executives Round Table program. Twenty-two executives from healthcare-related companies throughout California have joined ABL’s ranks since the first of the year. While the plurality have joined our new Silicon Valley Round Table (16 Members have either joined anew or transferred into this new Table from their former San Francisco Group), each of our other Round Tables – including Healthcare Tables in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco and Dana Point’s Healthcare Device/Tech Table – have benefitted from the surge in Membership.

There’s nothing like concern about the impact of significant Health Reform that awakens a Healthcare CEO’s previously latent interest in finding a forum where the opportunities and threats posed by Reform and other significant changes in the healthcare system are intelligently and openly discussed. In each of our Healthcare Round Tables, we’re fortunate to have Members who are closely linked to – or at least very knowledgeable about – The Powers That Be in Washington, DC and Sacramento, and they are keeping us informed as to likely outcomes, as the debate swirls around us. And there’s no question, this time around, about the velocity of the momentum for Change.

In response to our Members’ request for input from those on the national scene, on July 7th we’ll host ABL’s “Healthcare Reform Summit,” our first since a series of Workshops we held in the 1993-94 time frame, when Reforming Healthcare was last on the National Agenda. Our objective in our 2009 Summit is to bring together knowledgeable speakers about what is already happening with the Stimulus for Health IT spending, and what is likely to happen in the areas of Competitive Bidding, the impact of the Senior’s Lobby (and how they feel about cuts to their Medicare Advantage plans), aggressively publishing Comparative Effectiveness Research, and the various Bills emerging from Congress that are sure to vie for the People’s Support, and Legislative approval, in the weeks and months ahead.

One thing is certain, even Legislation will be just the beginning of this new branch in the road. Just as Medicare has been “tinkered with” for over 40 years, long after the “final” Bills are passed, most likely later this year, the value of CEOs conferring on how to take advantage of the opportunities they present – and dodge the pitfalls – will still be there. And so will ABL.