Bill DeMarco President of Pendulum tells the story, a man traveling across the country in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. Spotting a man at work in a field, he lowered his balloon and called out: "Where am I?" The man on the ground hollered back: "You're in a hot air balloon about 30 feet above ground." The man in the balloon yelled down, "You sound like a scientist." "I am a scientist, but how did you know?" asked the man on the ground. The balloonist answered: "I know because what you've told me is technically correct, but of absolutely no use to me." "Well, you sound like a policy maker," shouted the scientist. The balloonist responded: "I am a policy maker, but how in the world did you know?" Replied the scientist: "I know because you are in exactly the same position you were when we met: You don't know where you are. You don't know where you're going. And now you're blaming me."

Scientists and politicians have been debating the health crisis in our country for years ..and will continue to unless action is taken by both employers and consumers to set a course to change the current status quo of cyclical events and create strong incentives for change.

These changes cannot be unilateral as national health policy reform efforts have found but rather have a better chance of being accepted locally . Through transformation of community based care systems employers, consumers as well as physicians , hospitals and all stakeholders in the care system can take the risk of change together because the outcome benefits all concerned.

By tying each community plan to a regional network of communities all trying to implement the same types of improvement, both perfromance goals and innovation can be created and shared .

The alternative is a one size fits all single payer system government run that suffocates all innovation and assumes no accountabilty for improvement .

Pendulum believes that communities can drive change but need high end quality measurement and delivery system inmprovement techniques to link physcians outcomes to income , employer benefits to consumer need and population access to incentives for personal responsibility and health status improvement.