- 24 Sep 2007
- Research & Ideas
The FDA: What Will the Next 100 Years Bring?
With the possible exception of the Internal Revenue Service, no other governmental agency touches the lives of more Americans than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which ensures the safety of $1.5 trillion worth of consumer goods and medicines. Harvard Business School professor Arthur A. Daemmrich discusses the impact and challenges of the agency and his new book, Perspectives on Risk and Regulation: The FDA at 100. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 14 Aug 2007
- Working Paper Summaries
Improving Patient Outcomes: The Effects of Staff Participation and Collaboration in Healthcare Delivery
Health-care organizations have a well-documented, industry-wide need to improve their processes. To that aim, the Institute of Medicine has made at least 2 recommendations that focus on front-line staff—physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists. The first recommendation states that front-line staff should be involved in unit decision-making and the design of work processes and workflow (participation). The second emphasizes respectful interactions among front-line staff, including information-sharing and coordinating activities to achieve organizational goals (collaboration). This study provides preliminary supporting evidence for the Institute of Medicine's recommendations to use a dual, front-line strategy of participation and collaboration to improve patient outcomes. Key concepts include: Shared decision-making and respectful collaboration are vital to enabling improvement in health-care organizations. Front-line staff participation in process improvement can solve a common problem: lack of commitment from health-care professionals to implement new practices. Units with more collaboration—as measured by staff perception and use of collaborative work practices—experienced greater improvement in risk-adjusted mortality among patients. Participation in process improvement may be an effective strategy for other service organizations that face staff resistance to new routines. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 04 Jun 2007
- Research & Ideas
Is Health Care Making You Better—or Dead?
Professor Regina Herzlinger has been studying the US health care system for decades, advocating for consumer-driven reform as the best remedy. But the slow pace of change, which she attributes to a fat-cat network of insurers, policymakers, hospitals, and even employers, has her fed up. Her new book, Who Killed Health Care? adopts the emotional language of a manifesto in demanding change to make health care more responsive to customers, affordable to those in need, and a hotbed of innovation and entrepreneurship. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 30 May 2007
- Research & Ideas
Health Care Under a Research Microscope
Perhaps no industry has caught the research attention of Harvard Business School faculty as much as health care. Researchers are investigating business-focused solutions on everything from improving team work among surgical teams to developing market motivations that increase the use of water purification in poor villages. Key concepts include: The $2 trillion American health care system has grown bloated and overly expensive, and it delivers poor service to many patients. Harvard Business School faculty are looking at the system through a business management perspective to recommend changes in almost all aspects of health care research and delivery. Around the world, HBS researchers are studying ways to improve medical services to the poor using techniques that include everything from motivational marketing to microfinance. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 02 Mar 2007
- What Do You Think?
What Is the Government’s Role in US Health Care?
Healthcare will grab ever more headlines in the U.S. in the coming months, says Jim Heskett. Any service that is on track to consume 40 percent of the gross national product of the world's largest economy by the year 2050 will be hard to ignore. But are we addressing healthcare cost issues with the creativity they deserve? What do you think? Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 13 Dec 2006
- Research & Ideas
Improving Public Health for the Poor
Microfinance may offer a window on new methods for widening access to healthcare for the poor, says Harvard Business School's Michael Chu. He and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health have embarked on a new project to serve this critical sector. Bringing together public healthcare and market forces "could have huge impact," he says. Key concepts include: Poverty is defined by three billion people in the world living on less than $2 a day. Public health as a private good should be complementary to public health as a public good, not in opposition to it. Project Antares wants to take high-impact initiatives and deliver them through commercial means. Part of its measure of success is whether a higher percentage of the population is helped than would be otherwise. Poverty cannot be tamed with a single solution. It needs an arsenal comprising education, healthcare, housing, access to basic services, and access to capital. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 12 Jul 2006
- Research & Ideas
Competition the Cure for Healthcare
Michael Porter is considered by many the world's foremost authority on competition and strategy. He discusses the need for fundamental reform in the way the United States delivers healthcare. Q&A. Key concepts include: American healthcare is broken structurally, rewarding the wrong actions and punishing the patient. Competition correctly placed in healthcare can reduce cost, improve physician performance, and create better results for patients. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 05 Jul 2006
- Working Paper Summaries
Learning Tradeoffs in Organizations: Measuring Multiple Dimensions of Improvement to Investigate Learning-Curve Heterogeneity
How and why experience leads to performance improvement has made the learning curve an important management topic for sites ranging from nuclear power plants to cardiac surgical units. This new research looks deeper at learning curves by focusing on learning rates in technology adoption in similar organizations along multiple, potentially competing dimensions. Using longitudinal data from sixteen hospitals that are adopting a new technology for cardiac surgery, it specifically studies two dimensions: efficiency and application innovation and the potential tradeoff between efficiency and application innovation. It also asks how such tradeoffs are influenced. Key concepts include: Organizations should explicitly decide which dimension of learning is of greatest strategic importance to them. Some organizations may learn more slowly on a particular dimension because they are investing in a different, potentially contradictory dimension of learning. Hospitals in the study that focused on increasing the technical difficulty and innovativeness of their use of a new technology were less likely to increase efficiency as quickly as those that were focused on efficiency. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 05 Jul 2006
- Working Paper Summaries
Implementing New Practices: An Empirical Study of Organizational Learning in Hospital Intensive Care Units
How do hospital units, as complex service organizations, successfully implement best practices? Practices involve people and knowledge; people must apply knowledge to particular situations, so changing practices requires changing behavior. This study is a starting point for healthcare organizations to improve work practices. The researchers drew from literature on best practice transfer, team learning, and process change and developed four hypotheses to test at highly specialized hospital units that care for premature infants and critically ill newborns. Key concepts include: Organizations must set up project teams to investigate and implement new practices. Project teams are important for creating organizational change. There is a strong positive relationship between "learn-how" and implementation success. "Learn-how" makes new practices work in a specific context, and psychological safety encourages people to participate in this disruptive process. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 05 Jun 2006
- Research & Ideas
Using Competition to Reform Healthcare
In their new book, HBS Professor Michael Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg argue that the very structure of U.S. healthcare must be redesigned to create value and effective competition throughout the system. An excerpt from Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 13 Feb 2006
- Research & Ideas
The Hidden Market for Babies
Surrogates. Fertility clinics. Egg donors. Adoption. It's time to recognize (and perhaps regulate) the huge market being created by reproductive technologies, says HBS professor Debora L. Spar. She discusses her new book, The Baby Business. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 13 Jun 2005
- Research & Ideas
From Turf Wars to Learning Curves: How Hospitals Adopt New Technology
Turf wars and learning curves influence how new technology is adopted in hospitals. HBS professors Gary Pisano and Robert Huckman discuss the implications of their research for your organization. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 24 Jan 2005
- Research & Ideas
Entrepreneurial Hospital Pioneers New Model
A "Robin Hood" cardiac hospital in India—which charges wealthy patients, yet equally welcomes the destitute—is an exciting example of entrepreneurship in the subcontinent, says HBS professor Tarun Khanna. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 22 Nov 2004
- Research & Ideas
Side Effects: The Case of Propecia
Selling Propecia was a difficult marketing task for Merck & Co., and was recently the subject of a case study debated by Harvard Business School alumni. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 15 Nov 2004
- Research & Ideas
Solving the Health Care Conundrum
Executive summary of a presentation on reforming health care made by Professor Michael Porter at a Harvard Business School Publishing Virtual Seminar. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 02 Aug 2004
- Research & Ideas
Health Care Research and Prospects
A groundbreaking project at Harvard Business School is bringing together faculty, researchers, and students to probe issues in health care management. An interview with Professor Gary P. Pisano. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 17 Nov 2003
- Research & Ideas
The Business Case for Diabetes Disease Management
Diabetes is a tough disease to tackle. A case-study discussion led by HBS professor Nancy Beaulieu asked why it is so complex for business and society, and what might be done to curb its incidence. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 17 Nov 2003
- Research & Ideas
The Business of Babies
The demand for babies by infertile couples and other would-be parents is huge—and little discussed. HBS professor Debora L. Spar looks at the market realities. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 13 Jan 2003
- Research & Ideas
Making Biotech Work as a Business
What will it take for biotechnology to fulfill its economic potential? Participants need to think twice about the strategies and assumptions that are driving the industry, says HBS professor Gary P. Pisano. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
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.