Health Care and Treatment →
- 12 Nov 2015
- Research & Ideas
Can Consumers be Trusted with Their Own Health Care?
Some consumers want more control over their health care, while others are happy to leave the "experts" in charge. Why can't we have both? John Quelch advocates for empowering consumers to have a range of choices. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 04 Nov 2015
- Working Paper Summaries
Cohort Turnover and Operational Performance: The July Phenomenon in Teaching Hospitals
Hummy Song, Robert S. Huckman, and Jason R. Barro study the impacts of the annual July turnover of doctors in teaching hospitals on qualty of care.
- 02 Oct 2015
- Working Paper Summaries
Is Mandatory Nonfinancial Performance Measurement Beneficial?
Susanna Gallani, Takehisa Kajiwara, and Ranjani Krishnan examine the effect of regulation requiring mandatory measurement and peer disclosure of nonfinancial performance information such as customer satisfaction in the hospital industry.
- 10 Aug 2015
- Research & Ideas
New Medical Devices Get To Patients Too Slowly
The FDA has streamlined drug testing to ensure new therapies come to market quickly. But when it comes to life-giving medical devices, approvals seem unnecessarily slow, according to research by Ariel Dora Stern. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 27 May 2015
- Research & Ideas
Build 'Scaffolds' to Improve Performance of Temporary Teams
Many critical tasks are performed by teams created on the fly, but lack of stability can hinder their performance. Amy Edmondson and Melissa Valentine use the idea of scaffolds to produce greater collaboration and efficiency on temporary teams. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 15 Jul 2013
- Research & Ideas
Five Imperatives for Improving Health Care
Leaders from Harvard's medical and business schools are exploring ways to improve health care delivery. In a new study, their Forum on Healthcare Innovation delivers five key imperatives. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 21 Nov 2012
- Research & Ideas
What Health Care Managers Need to Know--and How to Teach Them
Health care business managers are under tremendous pressure to become more innovative, more productive, more accountable. The question, asks Regina Herzlinger, is who is going to teach them these skills? Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 03 Jul 2012
- Research & Ideas
HBS Faculty on Supreme Court Health Care Ruling
We asked three Harvard Business School faculty members, all experts in the health care field, to provide their views on various facets of one of this country's most important and complex problems. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 11 Oct 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
US Healthcare Reform and the Pharmaceutical Industry
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) will restructure the US health care market in the coming years. For the pharmaceutical industry, the ACA is likely to prove a mixed blessing. In this paper, Assistant Professor Arthur Daemmrich analyzes the political economy of health care, specifically concerning health care reform. He then considers how the ACA will affect the pharmaceutical sector, both quantitatively in terms of the size of the prescription drug market and qualitatively in terms of industry structure and competitive dynamics. Daemmrich also places the current reforms into historical context and describes the political negotiations that enabled passage of the ACA. Key concepts include: Since the United States is the world's largest prescription drug market and has among the fewest price control mechanisms, the ACA holds significance to pharmaceutical firms internationally. Over the course of its implementation in coming years, the ACA will significantly expand prescription drug use, including at the relative expense of other health services. In 2015, Daemmrich projects pharmaceutical spending between $435 and $440 billion (12.5 percent of total health care spending) and in 2020 it will near $700 billion (14 percent of total health care spending). Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services will be hard pressed to explain increased drug spending to consumers, especially compared to Europe and Japan where reference pricing (capping prices at an average within a therapeutic category or among peer countries) has become the norm. The ACA nevertheless holds the potential for the United States to be the first country to break out of the silo framework that dominates health budgeting in countries using reference price systems and to instead set budgets at the disease (or patient) level, linked to health outcomes. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 04 Apr 2011
- Research & Ideas
Attention Medical Shoppers: What Health Care Can Learn from Walmart and Amazon
At a Harvard Business School panel discussion on health care management, experts looked to the retail industry as a possible model for delivering medical services more effectively. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 30 Aug 2010
- Research & Ideas
Turning Employees Into Problem Solvers
To improve patient safety, hospitals hope their staff will use error-reporting systems. Question is, how can managers encourage employees to take the next step and ensure their constructive use? New research by Julia Adler-Milstein, Sara J. Singer, and HBS professor Michael W. Toffel. Key concepts include: Patient-safety information campaigns can help hospital staff do more than just report problems when they occur. Thanks to information campaigns, frontline workers increased the rate of suggesting constructive solutions to problems by 74 percent. The frequency increased even more when unit managers joined in problem solving. By serving as role models, managers who actively engage in problem solving can lead their frontline workers to create and share solutions. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 28 Jun 2010
- HBS Case
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
A recent Harvard Business School case by HBS professors Amy C. Edmondson and Anita Tucker explores how one hospital implemented its own version of health-care reform, taking overall performance levels from below average to the top 10 percent in the industry. From the HBS Alumni Bulletin. Key concepts include: The case offers valuable takeaways for future managers of any complex service organization. A key takeaway for students is the power of transparency as a mechanism for change. Benchmarking themselves to an internal standard helped the group get beyond rationalizing poor performance as an unavoidable consequence of the complexity of patient care. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 09 Dec 2009
- Working Paper Summaries
Mental Health in the Aftermath of Conflict
Wars are detrimental to the populations and the economy of affected countries. Over and above the human cost caused by deaths and suffering during a time of conflict, survivors of conflict are often left in poor economic circumstances and mental-health distress even after the conflict ends. How large are these costs? How long does it take for conflict-affected populations to recover from the mental stress of conflict? What policies are appropriate to assist mental health recovery? While considerable attention has been paid to post-war policies with regard to recovery in physical and human capital, mental health has received relatively less attention. The World Bank's Quy-Toan Do and HBS professor Lakshmi Iyer review the nascent literature on mental health in the aftermath of conflict, discuss the potential mechanisms through which conflict might affect mental health, and illustrate the findings from their study of mental health in a specific post-conflict setting: Bosnia and Herzegovina. Key concepts include: Mental health is an outcome that deserves greater attention from scholars and policymakers alike. Mental health is an important dimension of human capital. Mental health distress, while a matter of concern in and of itself, might also have adverse consequences for individuals' labor force participation and labor productivity in the post-conflict period, thereby delaying economic recovery after the conflict ends. Quantifying the effect of conflict on mental health is likely to be important for designing appropriate post-conflict policies for recovery. Somewhat surprisingly, findings showed no significant differences in overall mental health across people who experienced different levels of exposure to the conflict. People with more education, as well as those who move to a different locality after the conflict, suffer fewer conflict-related mental health consequences. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 13 Jul 2009
- Research & Ideas
Diagnosing the Public Health Care Alternative
With deep experience in health insurance reform, HBS faculty describe how improved competition in insurance plans could improve value for patients. Professors Regina E. Herzlinger, Robert Huckman, and Michael E. Porter take the pulse of a debate. Key concepts include: "A government market with an underpriced Medicare would likely lead to the death of private-sector markets and products," say Professor Regina E. Herzlinger and coauthor Tom Coburn (R-OK). Patients would like the option of a public insurance plan, according to Professor Robert Huckman. Competition among insurers should be based on improving patients' health outcomes achieved per dollar spent, writes Professor Michael E. Porter. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 07 May 2009
- Working Paper Summaries
Broadening Focus: Spillovers and the Benefits of Specialization in the Hospital Industry
What is the optimal scope of operations for firms? This question has particular relevance for the US hospital industry, because understanding the effects of focus and spillovers might help hospitals determine how they should balance focusing in a single clinical area with building expertise in related areas. While some scholars argue that narrowing an organization's set of activities improves its operational efficiency, others have noted that seemingly unfocused operations perform at a high level and that a broader range of activities may in fact increase firm value. This study by HBS doctoral student Jonathan Clark and professor Robert Huckman highlights the potential role of spillovers—specifically complementary spillovers—in generating benefits from focus at the operating unit level. Key concepts include: Hospitals devoting a greater portion of their business to treating patients in related service categories (i.e., those with the potential for knowledge spillovers) experience higher returns to specialization in a focal service. Ultimately, these results provide a potential explanation for why there might be decreasing returns to focusing an organization on a single operating activity (or narrow set of activities), especially when it is possible to invest in other activities that complement the organization's area of concentration. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 22 Apr 2009
- Working Paper Summaries
Where is the Pharmacy to the World? International Regulatory Variation and Pharmaceutical Industry Location
The era of paternalistic medicine has passed, but the notion that patients can act as consumers and make appropriate decisions concerning medical treatment poses countervailing risks of its own. A better accommodation among key players needs to be struck to foster the safe use of pharmaceuticals, according to HBS professor Arthur Daemmrich. The "pharmacy to the world," once located at the intersection of Germany, Switzerland, and France, today is found in the United States. Studies of the industry have attributed this sustained competitive advantage to a variety of factors, including U.S. intellectual property policies, funding for biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health, the absence of government controls on drug prices, and the availability of venture capital and other factors that fostered the growth of the biotechnology industry. The data and analysis presented in this working paper, however speculative, are an initial step toward deepening the understanding of interrelationships between government regulation, patients' mobilization both as regulators and as consumers, and the functioning of the pharmaceutical industry. Key concepts include: An open question is whether the current "pharmacy to the world" of the United States will lose ground to competitors from developing countries, especially India and China. Regulation plays a role in the success and failure of the pharmaceutical industry. The consumer mode that has emerged in the United States has proven easy to manipulate for the industry, as in cases of corporate-financed organizations claiming to be self-organized by patients. The consumer mode in the United States has also driven a focus on disease prevalent in wealthy countries, to the detriment of research into HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other ailments prevalent in the developing world. The combination of public attention to drug prices, health concerns from product withdrawals due to adverse reactions, and criticisms of the failure to deliver medicines to patients in developing countries pose significant challenges to the industry and regulators. The emergence of a consumer model of regulation poses a number of critical, unresolved questions about the longer-term role of government, industry, the medical profession, and citizens. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 08 Apr 2009
- Research & Ideas
Clayton Christensen on Disrupting Health Care
In The Innovator's Prescription, Clayton Christensen and his coauthors target disruptive innovations that will make health care both more affordable and more effective. From the HBS Alumni Bulletin. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 09 Mar 2009
- Research & Ideas
How to Revive Health-Care Innovation
Simple solutions to complex problems lead to breakthroughs in industries from retailing to personal computers to printing. So let's try health care, too. According to HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors of The Innovator's Prescription, such disruption to an industry might look like a threat, but it "always proves to be an extraordinary growth opportunity." Book excerpt. Key concepts include: Most disruptions have three enablers: a simplifying technology, a business model innovation, and a disruptive value network. Business model innovations are almost always forged by new entrants to an industry. Disruption of an industry rarely happens piecemeal. It is more common that entirely new value networks arise, displacing the old. Always, the technological enablers of disruption are successfully deployed against an industry's simplest problems first. Health care is no different. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 17 Dec 2007
- Research & Ideas
The Rise of Medical Tourism
Medical tourism—traveling far and wide for health care that is often better and certainly cheaper than at home—appeals to patients with complaints ranging from heart ailments to knee pain. Why is India leading in the globalization of medical services? Q&A with Harvard Business School's Tarun Khanna. Key concepts include: Medical tourism is a new term but not a new idea. Patients have long traveled in search of better care. Today, constraints and long waiting lists at home, as well as the ease of global travel, make medical tourism more appealing. Superior medical schools, a low cost of living, family preferences, and the barriers to foreign accreditation mean that Indian doctors may prefer to work in India rather than elsewhere. The medical services industry is evolving quickly. Khanna expects to see dynamics in China similar to those in India and in other parts of Southeast Asia. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
The Role of Incentive Salience in Habit Formation
Obesity is a serious problem in the United States. One established way to increase individuals’ exercise is to provide incentives, but merely offering them is not enough to change behavior. A field experiment with users of a pedometer-tracking app showed that marketing the incentives matters: Incentives that included a marketing component produced significantly more behavior change and more lasting exercise habits than incentives without significant marketing.