The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Book review

The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care. By Clayton M Christensen, with Jerome H. Grossman and Jason Hwang. McGraw-Hill, 492 pages. $32.95.

Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor who has regularly trained his gaze on innovation, has a new book to join his former bestsellers. The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution. And what could be more important than tackling the dysfunctional U.S. health-care system?

In his introduction, Christensen outlines the sad--or perhaps more appropriately, "terrifying"--state of U.S. health care: it's gobbling up a higher and higher percentage of gross domestic product as costs rise more steeply than other sectors. Governments and corporations are increasingly unable to meet the projected tab for retiree healthcare and the economic model is out of whack: doctors and hospitals, which are paid for tests and visits regardless of patient need, are financially encouraged to order more.

While much dialogue centers around paying for future costs, the book, written with a pair of prominent health-care specialists, focuses on how to pare costs and boost the quality and accessibility of current care. It seeks to provide a common language, the author writes, to rooms full of specialists who "talk past each other" as they focus...