Our Optimal Health is addressing the need for new approaches to the provision of health care in Franklin County (Ohio). It is fostering a community dialogue that will identify innovations to assure the delivery of affordable and sustainable health care to its community.
Our Optimal Health is a complex and multi-layered effort. It was established following a series of events that generated discussions among community leaders about the possibility of exploring whether the people of Franklin County might be able to create a new response to a potentially impending health care implosion.
In August 2005, community leaders invited Generon Consulting to “assess our community’s readiness for change to create the conditions necessary to envision and realize health care for all people in Franklin County that is affordable for individuals and sustainable for our community.” Generon, an international consulting company and focused on solving complex world problems, spoke in depth with 58 people with differing perspectives on health care in Franklin County: leaders of hospitals, foundations, large and small businesses, and community organizations as well as politicians, public servants, physicians, and patients.
Our Challenge
- We have no health care “system”
- What we do have is not sustainable
- Every party feels like a victim
- No one feels empowered to act (on changing the whole)
Our Opportunity
Two options focus on incremental change while the other two seek fundamental shift. Our Optimal Health had the option of either seeking a path leading to more of the emergency or a path leading to new emergence.
The path Our Optimal Health chose:
"To create fundamental shift-while supporting incremental change".
