“Verena and Hanna’s focus on patient-centered partnerships that involve all actors across health care is spot on. Only a well-coordinated dance between pharma, payers, policymakers, healthcare professionals, and patients can catalyze the much-needed shift from reactive care systems to proactive, predictive, and preventive health systems that keep people healthy. The symphony of today’s vast amounts of health data, combined with advanced analytical capabilities, has the potential to provide the rhythm for this dance.”

Ann Aerts, MD
Head of the Novartis Foundation

“The Next Tango is an inspirational book. It brings real-world examples that showcase the necessity of all the stakeholders to dance a tango that brings patients to the centerstage of care.
The book recognizes how legacy business models involving payers, pharma, and providers – if not aligned by value agreements – do actually not achieve patient-centered value. However, that should precisely be the purpose of those organizations. The book serves as a guide to do it differently. For people who work with healthcare strategy and policy, it makes us travel across healthcare systems’ problems and identify opportunities for building better solutions that can impact population health and keep organizations sustainable.”

Prof. Dr Ana Paula Beck da Silva Etges
Adjunct Professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul 
Co-founder of the TDABC in Healthcare Consortium
Board member of PEV Healthcare Consulting 

“With The Next Tango, Ms Boëthius, Dr Voelter, and co-authors foster greater understanding among all stakeholders of patient interests in health care – not as the other stakeholders want to understand them, but as the patients themselves wish subjectively to be understood. This empathetic appreciation, expressed through each of the other stakeholders’ perspectives, is essential to unlock the full potential of a healthcare system that today rapidly evolves with burgeoning change in science, public policy, and finance. A stakeholder who can readily and sincerely inhabit the patient’s point of view can not only generate more value for the patient, but enlist the patient’s cooperation for the benefit of the whole system. We all thereby raise the standard of care – for one another.”

Charles Barker LLM
Managing director of PrimeMover Associates
Collaboration and conflict management

“Patient centricity is a logical next step for 5P healthcare leaders’ collaborative value creation.
The focus on patient outcomes is very important for all-in health care delivery today, replacing legacy systems and leaders stuck in self-interest and seeking to hang on to the status quo. This Next Tango is a highly recommended read for those who want to do the right thing for patients and their loved ones.”

Prof. Dr Fred van Eenennaam
President and chairman of VBHC Center Europe and The Decision Institute

“The Next Tango brilliantly captures the shifting landscape of patient-centered health care. It shows how regulatory bodies and policymakers have become strategic partners in an essential, yet complex interplay between rigorous data evaluation and the need to address diverse patient needs. This balancing act can create tension with other stakeholders, such as providers and payers, whose priorities are broad access and cost efficiency. The authors elegantly embrace this dynamic tension – rather than defaulting to criticism – and propose a song sheet to foster collaboration and achieving the best possible outcomes for patients.”

Katrin Rupalla, PhD, MBA
Head of global regulatory affairs at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine 
Former board member of the Cancer Drug Development Forum

“I really enjoyed how the authors put the emphasis on  the patient perspective! Particularly the partisan perceptions with empathy toward all five actors – this is central to the understanding of why we all act in different ways in health care. The last chapter provides a blueprint of doing this in real life: putting it together in The Next Tango.”

Lars Nicklasson
Market access and healthcare public affairs professional

“I love this book! It’s a clear agenda for change that will lead to a meaningful and productive dance for the people who seek care as well as those who provide care. All throughout, I see the need for my favorite song about healthcare today – we all need Sia’s “Courage to Change.” It doesn’t have to be scary. Change can be creative. It can be liberating. But the one thing change cannot be is incremental. Small, random steps will not create the tango Verena Voelter and Hanna Boëthius imagine. The Next Tango they envision is integrated with members of the dance troupe moving in sync. As Sia’s song continues, “You’re not alone, I promise. Standing together we can do anything.”

Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA
Former CEO of Jefferson Health
Author of Patient No Longer and Feelin’ Alright 

“The Next Tango is a rare book that is co-authored by diverse stakeholders in health care – including a patient. It asks the crucial question, “How do we get the ‘care’ back into health care?” This timely book contains evidence that while health care is teetering on a global collapse, the system offers little value for suffering patients and beleaguered staff. The authors impart an understanding of the roles of the various actors in health care. The Next Tango refreshingly centers on the often-forgotten patient and is a must-read for anybody who advocates for health system improvement.”

Sue Robins
Patient advocate and speaker
Author of Bird’s Eye View: Stories of a life lived in health care and
Ducks in a Row: Health Care Reimagined