Joe Flower

With over 37 years of experience, Joe Flower has emerged as a thought leader on the deep forces changing healthcare in the United States and around the world. He has spoken to or consulted with hundreds of clients ranging from the World Health Organization, the Global Business Network, the U.K. National Health Service, the U.S. Department of Defense, and Fortune 100 companies, to the majority of state hospital associations in the U.S. as well as many of the provincial associations and ministries in Canada, and an extraordinary variety of other players across healthcare in every sector.

Flower is the author of "How To Get What We Pay For: A Handbook for the Revolutionaries – Doctors, Nurses, Healthcare Leaders, Inventors, Investors, Employers, Insurers, Governments, Consumers, You" and "Healthcare Beyond Reform: Doing It Right for Half the Cost." His books provide a unique, comprehensive framework for understanding the systemic transformation underway in healthcare and a manual for how to make intelligent and strategic choices for oneself and for one’s organization. He is a contributing editor at TheHealthcareBlog.com and a featured columnist for the American Hospital Association’s H&HN Daily.

Underpinning much of Flower’s writing is his extensive research into leadership and the change process, drawing on over 60 top thinkers on organizational change, including Peter Drucker, Peter Senge, and Ari de Geus. The project took him into the study of chaos theory, Eastern thought, and Aikido, in which he eventually earned a black belt. Flower was a contributing writer for Wired Magazine in its explosive early years, and a columnist for the pioneering health websites DNA.com and HealthCentral.com. He was a founding member of the International Health Futures Network and the principal author of the landmark healthcare forecast, “Technological Advances and the Next 50 Years of Cardiology,” published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Flower also serves on the Board of the Center for Health Design and has worked with numerous hospitals and architectural firms as they design future healthcare environments. He received his B.A. from UC Santa Barbara, and his MA in history from San Francisco State University. In his free time, he plays guitar, hosts the Writers Conference on The Well, or reads until his eyes cross with fatigue.