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New research on health care and treatment from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including corporate investment in community health, health care management, and ways to improve health care delivery.
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What Hospitals Must Learn to Compete

by Alumni Bulletin Staff

3QUESTIONS Why is it so difficult for American health care providers to compete for customers? Raffaella Sadun and Leemore Dafny discuss why health care needs a business strategy. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Consumers Blame Business for Global Health Problems. Can Business Become the Solution?

by Danielle Kost

3Questions Millions of people have been harmed by cigarettes, defective merchandise, pollution, addiction and other business by-products. Pioneering companies are exploring healthier ways to operate, say Amy C. Edmondson and Dr. Howard K. Koh. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Advancing Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Research Through Open Innovation Competitions

by Blasco, Andrea, Michael G. Endres, Rinat A. Sergeev, Anup Jonchhe, Max Macaluso, Rajiv Narayan, Ted Natoli, Jin H. Paik, Bryan Briney, Chunlei Wu, Andrew I. Su, Aravind Subramanian, and Karim R. Lakhani

Crowdsourcing is a way for many individuals to address a common problem. This paper describes the design and outcomes of three crowdsourcing contests focused on algorithms for 1) clustering antibody sequences, 2) imputing gene expression measurements, and 3) performing fast queries on a particular dataset. Innovation through contests greatly improved the solutions available.

Pursuing Precision Medicine at Intermountain Healthcare

Re: Richard G. Hamermesh, Kathy E. Giusti

What happens when Intermountain Healthcare invests resources in an innovative precision medicine unit to provide life-extending, genetically targeted therapies to late-stage cancer patients? Professors Richard Hamermesh and Kathy Giusti discuss the case and its connections to their work with the Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

How Cost Accounting is Improving Healthcare in Rural Haiti

by Carmen Nobel

The cost of healthcare in rural Haiti was found to vary widely, even inside the same health organization. A pioneering cost accounting system co-developed by Robert Kaplan was called in to determine the cause. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Women Heart Patients Have Better Survival Odds with Women Doctors

by Rachel Layne

Roughly one in 66 women has a better chance of leaving the hospital alive if their doctor is also a woman, according to research by Laura Huang and colleagues. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Electronic Health Records Were Supposed to Cut Medical Costs. They Haven't.

by Roberta Holland

Digitizing patient information promised to cut health care costs by driving down administrative expenses. So why can it cost a doctor more than $200 to process a single bill? New research by Robert Kaplan and colleagues. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Identifying Sources of Inefficiency in Health Care

by Amitabh Chandra and Douglas O. Staiger

This economic study finds evidence of allocative inefficiency and substantial variation in comparative advantage across hospitals, with the benefits from treatment being much higher in some hospitals than others. The study overall suggests new directions for research on productivity in healthcare.

Healthy Business? Managerial Education and Management in Healthcare

by Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, Renata Lemos, and John Van Reenen

A hospital's proximity to a university supplying both business and clinical education is associated with higher management practice scores and better clinical outcomes.

Making Health Insurance That Consumers Actually Like

Re: Regina E. Herzlinger

By motivating its insurance customers to take care of themselves, South African firm Vitality has expanded to the United Kingdom and China. In this podcast, Professor Regina Herzlinger discusses potential impacts of this model for health care in the United States. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Op-Ed: Can the Proposed American Health Care Act Improve on 'Obamacare'?

by John Quelch, Dr. Gordon Moore, and Emily Boudreau

Politics aside, the primary question to be asked about the newly proposed American Health Care Act is this: Will it improve choice, cost, and outcomes for health care consumers? Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

A Good Thing Happens When Doctors Start Talking to Their Patients

by Michael Blanding

A longer visit with your doctor before a procedure can improve results and save money, according to Robert S. Kaplan. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Challenging the Belief that Liability Laws Kill Medical Device Innovation

by Michael Blanding

Many policymakers believe liability laws need reforming so that medical device makers are free to innovate without threat of costly lawsuits. But new research by Hong Luo and Alberto Galasso suggests innovation is not thwarted—just rechanneled. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Building Affordable Health Care in Paradise

Re: Tarun Khanna

By some accounts, only about 5 percent of people worldwide receive cardiac treatment they need to survive. Professor Tarun Khanna highlights the need for affordable health care at scale, and a possible model based on factory-like repetition and learning in the Cayman Islands. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Why Business Should Invest in Community Health

by John Quelch, Howard Koh, and Pamela Yatsko

Many companies invest heavily to keep their employees healthy, but don't take the next step—invest in keeping their community healthy. John Quelch, Howard Koh, and Pamela Yatsko make the case. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Why Don't More People Get Flu Shots at Work?

by Roberta Holland

The frontline battle station in the just-started influenza season is the workplace flu vaccine clinic. The problem: fewer than half of employees take advantage of them. John Beshears discusses why location makes a difference. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Can Obamacare Be Saved?

by John A. Quelch and Emily Boudreau

Is Obamacare in trouble? With premiums rising and some health providers pulling back, The Affordable Care Act might seem wobbly. John A. Quelch and Emily Boudreau argue for remedies that include more education for consumers, innovation from insurers, and flexibility on behalf of regulators. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Where is TripAdvisor for Doctors?

by John A. Quelch

Would you give your doctor a poor rating just as you might flunk a bad meal or hotel? What if you needed that physician's services again? John A. Quelch discusses why it's difficult to create a TripAdvisor for doctors. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Tort Reform and Innovation

by Alberto Galasso and Hong Luo

This paper investigates how tort reforms might affect the development of new medical device technologies. The authors find that caps on non-economic damages (such as pain and suffering) are associated with an average decline in patenting for medical instrument technologies. The effect, however, is highly varied and depends on the characteristics of both the devices and the medical fields.

How Consumers and Businesses are Reshaping Public Health

by John A. Quelch

Through a collection of case studies, John A. Quelch and co-authors explore the intersection of health care and business in the new book, Consumers, Corporations, and Public Health. Read an excerpt. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.