Publications

May 21, 2020
Editorial

Primary Care Is Hurting: Why Aren't Private Insurers Pitching In?

By: Leemore S. Dafny and J. Michael McWilliams

Primary care clinicians are the front line for patients with suspected infection. We rely on them to diagnose, triage, and manage patients with potential or confirmed COVID infections. They are also responsible for keeping non-COVID medical conditions under control... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Primary Care; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Financial Condition; Insurance

October 2022 (Revised September 2024)
Case

mPharma: Scaling Access to Affordable Primary Care in Africa

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ben Creo

mPharma hopes to scale up to create the largest pan-African healthcare company ever to provide much-needed primary care in retail pharmacies; a reliable, fairly priced supply of drugs; and micro-insurance for drugs. They must prioritize launching a telemedicine... View Details

August 3, 2022
Article

How Will Amazon Approach U.S. Primary Care?

By: Robert S. Huckman and Bradley Staats

Amazon has a playbook for reinventing businesses that it enters. It includes simplifying processes, experimenting to determine which new approaches work best, and continuously recombining its existing assets to come up with a better way to do things. It is likely to... View Details

Keywords: Amazon; Health Care; Technology; Primary Care; Health Care and Treatment; Information Infrastructure; Health Industry; Health Industry; United States

24 Jan 2014
Other Presentation

Value Based Health Care Delivery

By: Michael E. Porter

According to Harvard professor Michael Porter, health care reform is proving to be one of the defining issues of the 21st century, both in the United States and throughout the world. Costs are exploding even in single-payer systems driven by aging populations and... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Service Delivery; Value; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

01 Aug 2023
Cold Call Podcast

Can Business Transform Primary Health Care Across Africa?

Keywords: Re: Regina E. Herzlinger; Health; Health

January 2023
Exercise

Identify the Health Care Venture

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and James Wallace

This case enables rapid learning of the key financial characteristics of many types of health care organizations and to diagnose their financial status. It is a surprisingly fun exercise (see the Teaching Note) accomplished by organizing groups of students that compete... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Spending; Health Care Financing; Health Care Industry; Health Care Operations; Health Care Delivery; Health Care and Treatment; Financial Condition; Health Industry

November 10, 2020
Article

Value-Based Health Care in Four Different Health Care Systems

By: Mjåset Christer, Umar Ikram, Navraj S. Nagra and Thomas W. Feeley

Health care systems across the world have increasingly embraced a value-based health care (VBHC) agenda. They do so for different reasons, using different foundations, and variations on the tools and tactics to effect their strategic goals. The role of governments,... View Details

Keywords: Value-based Health Care; Comparative Analysis; Health Care and Treatment; Value; Global Range; Performance Improvement

Find at Harvard

June 2018
Supplement

Amil and the Health Care System in Brazil (B)

By: Regina Herzlinger, Ana Maria Malik, Ruth Costas and Priscilla Zogbi

Brazilian Managed Care Organization Amil faces a series of challenges while trying to redefine the terms of its relationship with hospitals and clinics and to implement a new health care model based on primary care and family medicine. View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Brazil; Managed Care; Innovation; Health Care Industry; Health Care and Treatment; Health; Cost Management; Innovation and Invention; Competitive Strategy; Health Industry; Health Industry; Brazil

October 2013 (Revised October 2016)
Case

Steward Health Care System

By: Robert F. Higgins and Noah Fisher

Steward Health has raised private equity and has converted from not-for-profit to for-profit. The case describes its Accountable Care Organization (ACO) and asks whether it should continue this experiment. View Details

Keywords: Accountable Care Organization; ACO; Medicare; Medicaid; Medical Services; Cerberus; Caritas; Health Care Policy; Health Care Industry; Provider Organizations; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States

January 2018
Case

Partners In Health: Costing Primary Care in Haiti

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Mahek A. Shah

Partners in Health, a global NGO focused on delivering health care to residents of rural underserved communities, conducts a project on the cost of primary care at five sites in the Central Highlands of Haiti. It devises a simple approach for tracking the resources... View Details

Keywords: Global Health; Public Health; Health Care and Treatment; Activity Based Costing and Management; Cost Accounting; Rural Scope; Health Industry; Haiti

Blog Post

Innovation in Health Care Education: A Call to Action

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Vasant Kumar, Kevin Schulman and Karen Staman

Health care administration educators are at a crossroads: the health care sector is rife with inefficiencies, erratic quality, unequal access, and sky-high costs, complex problems which call for innovative solutions, and yet, according to our content analysis of top... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Education; Education; Health; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Health Industry

February 2015
Background Note

A Note on the Affordable Care Act and the U.S. Health Care System

By: Joseph L. Bower and Michael Norris

This note provides an overview of the U.S. health care system as it stood in 2014, including an overview of hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and other health care providers. It also discusses the major political actions on health care in the 20th century,... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Policy; Political Process; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States

January 2023
Teaching Note

Identify the Health Care Venture

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and James Wallace

Teaching Note for HBS Exercise No. 323-061. View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Delivery; Health Care Financing; Health Care Industry; Health Care Services

March 2015
Case

Transforming Care at UnityPoint Health – Fort Dodge

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Ashley-Kay Fryer and Morten T. Hansen

This case details the transformation of a health care delivery system, UnityPoint Health – Fort Dodge, into a Pioneer Accountable Care Organization (ACO) after the passage of health reform in the United States. The case explores in detail how the hospital CEO and staff... View Details

Keywords: ACO; Health Care; Health Care Industry; Health Reform; Change Leadership; Change Management; Coordination; Health Care and Treatment; Leading Change; Health Industry; United States

January 2000 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Cambridge Hospital Community Health Network - The Primary Care Unit

By: V.G. Narayanan, Lisa Brem and Ryan Moore

The Cambridge Hospital Community Health Network needed to gain a better understanding of its unit-of-service costs, which had been rising at a rate of 10% per year. The network's step-down costing system gave only aggregate costing information, and there was some... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Health Care and Treatment; Cost Accounting; Cost; Network Effects; Health Industry; Health Industry; Massachusetts

June 2014 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Access Health CT: Marketing Affordable Care (A)

By: John A. Quelch and Michael Norris

At the close of open-enrollment in March of 2014, Kevin Counihan, CEO of Access Health CT, Connecticut's state health insurance exchange, stops to consider the success it has experienced so far and think about how to ensure its long-term sustainability. View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Industry; Health Care Policy; Public Health Insurance Exchange; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Connecticut

May 2020
Article

Value-Based Health Care in Undergraduate Medical Education

By: Jessica N. Holtzman, Bhushan R. Deshpande, Jessica C. Stuart, Thomas W. Feeley, Mary Witkowski, Edward M. Hundert and Jennifer Kasper

Problem: Value-based health care (VBHC) is an innovative framework for redesigning care delivery to achieve better outcomes for patients and reduce cost; however, providing students with the skills to understand and engage with these topics is a challenge to... View Details

Keywords: Value-based Health Care; Health Care and Treatment; Higher Education; Curriculum and Courses