Futurist Ian Morrison said he sees a massive consolidation of hospitals that could mean that there will be 100 to 200 large regional systems around the country, according to an article on the Healthcare IT News website.
The accepted view is "you have to be big, and you have to be integrated," Morrison said.
Morrison recently gave the keynote at the National Healthcare Innovation Summit in Boston. According to the article, Morrison spoke of the urgent need for innovation in healthcare.
"We have to innovate," he said. "We don't have a choice. We have hit the wall." Morrison said that in the short term, there would be lots of agitation and planning. He predicted the industry would not get serious about change until 2018.