Commentary: Transformation can put hospitals at the center of their communities

Innovation has been a popular buzzword in healthcare for all the time I’ve been in the health policy field, and well before that. But what is meant by the term is fundamentally different today than it was decades or, for that matter, even a few years ago.

Where we have commonly thought of innovation in terms of the latest diagnostic scanning technology or a new surgical procedure that reduced recovery times and improved outcomes, now it has a much broader, game-changing meaning.

The rise of consumerism, the digital economy, precision medicine, predictive analytics, the increased use of artificial intelligence, and the acute awareness of healthcare affordability pressures—these are all serving as catalysts for change on a scale that...