At the root of the transformation occurring in the health care industry—both in the United States and internationally—is the fundamental challenge of improving clinical outcomes while controlling costs. Addressing this challenge will require dramatic improvements in the processes by which care is delivered to patients. This, in turn, will involve novel technologies, fundamentally different approaches to care delivery, a rethinking of incentives, and new roles for individuals and organizations throughout the health care sector. This course will equip students with strategies and tools to help navigate the ever-changing landscape of the health care industry.

Career Focus

This course is appropriate for students interested in understanding the fundamental improvement challenges facing the health care sector and developing strategies for addressing them. Students may have career interests in organizations that provide health care (e.g., hospitals, medical groups, retail clinics) or in firms that partner with, supply, consult to, or invest in such organizations (e.g., payers, biopharmaceutical and device companies, health information technology, venture capital and private equity).

Educational Objectives

This course will help students develop the managerial skills required to identify and implement transformational change. It will draw upon a range of approaches for improving value in health care delivery, including continuous improvement, organizational redesign, population health management, precision medicine, patient engagement, digital health, payment reform, and the creation of appropriate incentives for value delivery and innovation. For each of these approaches, the course will emphasize the importance of identifying improvement opportunities, implementing relevant changes, and measuring their effects on performance.

Course Faculty

The course will be co-taught by Susanna Gallani and Robert Huckman.

Susanna Gallani is the Tai Family Associate Professor of Business Administration. Her research focuses on performance management systems in health care organizations and how these systems operate to align behaviors, measure, and reward performance. Themes that are central to her interests include the role that performance management systems play in improving health care value, enhancing health equity, and reducing workplace burnout.

Robert Huckman is Albert J. Weatherhead III Professor of Business Administration, the Howard Cox Faculty Chair of the HBS Health Care Initiative, and the Unit Head for Technology and Operations Management. He studies topics related to performance improvement, digital innovation, and consumer engagement in health care. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and serves as an advisor to several private health care companies.

Course Format

Transforming Health Care Delivery is composed of two half-courses: (1) a case-based course in Q3 and (2) a field course built around strategic projects with local Boston-area hospitals in Q4. The Q3 course can be taken on its own (i.e., without the Q4 option) and is a prerequisite for the Q4 course. For additional information about the Q4 course, please see the description for 6215—Field Course: Transforming Health Care Delivery.

Typically, students in the course have formed a close-knit community to support each other's interests in learning more about the health care industry. To that end, Professors Gallani and Huckman will host optional, small-group “coffee chats” about current topics in health care.

Course Content

The Q3 course includes 14 in-class sessions, which are organized into the following modules:

• Module 1— Prioritizing Health: This module will discuss various dimensions of a critical challenge in health care delivery—improving the value of care delivered to patients. Beyond managing cost, the challenge of improving value depends critically on shifting the focus of delivery systems from health care to health. Prioritizing health requires delivery systems to address issues related to the social and behavioral determinants of health, preventative care, effective management of chronic disease, and understanding the limits of medical intervention.
• Module 2— Optimizing Care: This module will consider how health care systems can organize to deliver value by providing health more effectively and efficiently. The approaches covered include redesigning care around the patient, aligning incentives and compensation, leveraging specialization, building insight through clinical data management, and fostering workforce resiliency and wellbeing.
• Module 3— Transforming Delivery: This module will examine new approaches and technologies for delivering care with a focus on improving health and increasing value. The topics covered include efforts to leverage new technologies (e.g., precision medicine, telemedicine, extended reality (XR), and generative AI), new models of care delivery (e.g., retail locations and home-based settings), and new care providers (e.g., non-physician providers, including patients and their families).

Grading and Evaluation

In the Q3 course, students will be evaluated on the basis of class participation and a final paper (completed in teams of 2-3 students) that involves developing a short case that applies course themes to a specific organization using publicly available information. Teams will be able to select the organizations they study. Further guidance will be provided early in the quarter.

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