Generational cohorts hold the key to understanding patients and health care providers: coming-of-age experiences influence health care behaviors for a lifetime.

The health care landscape is ever changing. Medical groups are experiencing challenges in recruiting staff, dealing with managing effective clinical teams, and tempering the growing tensions among partnerships and medical groups. Additionally, all clinicians report many patients are now approaching them differently than in the past. They come armed with medical information from the Internet and a more questioning attitude toward the clinician's directive for care. What accounts for these behavioral changes and management challenges within health care organizations? These issues may be best understood and addressed through generational cohort analysis.