Publications

2023
Working Paper

Achieving Universal Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: Addressing Market Failures or Providing a Social Floor?

By: Katherine Baicker, Amitabh Chandra and Mark Shepard

The United States spends substantially more on health care than most developed countries, yet leaves a greater share of the population uninsured. We suggest that incremental insurance expansions focused on addressing market failures will propagate inefficiencies and... View Details

Keywords: Public Sector; Insurance; Health Care and Treatment; Policy; Innovation and Invention

September 2014 (Revised May 2017)
Case

Fresno's Social Impact Bond for Asthma

By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez

In 2014, Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) were quickly gaining popularity as an investment vehicle which joined together private investors and nonprofits to tackle social issues. Although numerous SIB projects and proposals had cropped up across the U.S. following the launch... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise; Health Care; Marketing; Bonds; Financing; Asthma; Air Pollution; Air Quality; Chronic Disease; Public Health; Health; Health Care and Treatment; Finance; Health Industry; Health Industry; United States

November 2016
Case

QuintilesIMS: Biosimilar Marketing in England

By: John A. Quelch and Emily C. Boudreau

QuintilesIMS was a leading healthcare consulting firm best known for its data and information offerings as well as its market research and management consulting services for life science companies. By 2015, the company was expanding beyond the biopharmaceutical... View Details

Keywords: Health; Pharmaceutical Industry; Biotech; Marketing; Health Care and Treatment; Biotechnology Industry; England

January–February 2024
Article

Shared Service Delivery Can Increase Client Engagement: A Study of Shared Medical Appointments

By: Ryan W. Buell, Kamalini Ramdas, Nazlı Sönmez, Kavitha Srinivasan and Rengaraj Venkatesh

Problem Definition: Clients and service providers alike often consider one-on-one service delivery to be ideal, assuming – perhaps unquestioningly – that devoting individualized attention best improves client outcomes. In contrast, in shared service delivery, clients... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Customer Satisfaction; Outcome or Result; Performance Improvement

Find at Harvard

01 Feb 2002
News

Health Industry Alumni Convene for Conference

Current issues in health care; ranging from finance and patients' rights to genomics and personalized medicine; were among the subjects discussed last November at the HBS Health Industry Alumni Association's... View Details

Keywords: Ambulatory Health Care Services; Ambulatory Health Care Services

01 Mar 2012
News

How to Close the Health Gap

higher rates in poor countries. You’ve heard of the wealth gap. Welcome to the health gap. The people who need the medicines most in the world are the least likely to receive them. “Now that we have such extraordinary capabilities, what... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Ambulatory Health Care Services

September 17, 2020
Article

Protecting Vulnerable Older Patients during the Pandemic

By: Umar Ikram, Susanna Gallani, Jose F. Figueroa and Thomas W. Feeley

Older people (70 years and older) with multiple chronic conditions have the highest risk of being hospitalized and dying from COVID-19. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how a strong primary care system can play an important role in protecting this group of... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; High-risk Patients; Primary Care; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Demographics; Age

Read Now

May 1999 (Revised July 2000)
Teaching Note

Reading Rehabilitation Hospital: Implementing Patient-Focused Care TN

By: Jody H. Gittell and Sandra J. Sucher

Teaching Note for (9-898-172). A rewritten version of an earlier teaching note. View Details

Keywords: Health; Health Care and Treatment; Medical Specialties; Health Testing and Trials; Valuation; Service Operations; Balance and Stability; Production; Demand and Consumers; Risk and Uncertainty; Technology; Health Industry

2012
Report

Competing by Saving Lives: How Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Companies Create Shared Value in Global Health

By: Mark R. Kramer, Kyle Peterson, Matthew Rehrig, Mike Stamp and Samuel Kim

Examples of how pharmaceutical and medical companies are addressing unmet health needs in low- and middle- income economies, creating shared value by providing products and services that tackle global health problems. View Details

Keywords: Shared Value; Low- And Middle-income Economies; Health Care and Treatment; Global Range; Pharmaceutical Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

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11 Jan 2024
Blog Post

My Summer of Joy with the National Parks Service

a medical device engineer working on products for Operating Rooms and Intensive Care Units. I came to school passionate about access and equity in health care, and curious about systemic barriers to... View Details

Web

Geography of Care - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

full-service hospitals. Traditional geographic expansion has been focused on acquiring health care facilities that merely reproduce the same services in the different areas... View Details

Web

My Summer of Joy with the National Parks Service - Recruiting

funding model to ensure their long-term viability within the park service. Before I started at HBS, I was a medical device engineer working on products for Operating Rooms and Intensive Care Units. I came to school passionate about access... View Details

04 Dec 2023
Blog Post

My Summer of Joy with the National Parks Service

Care Units. I came to school passionate about access and equity in health care, and curious about systemic barriers to resources that allow communities to live healthy lives. As soon as I got to campus... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit / Government

Article

The Inpatient Discharge Lounge as a Potential Mechanism to Mitigate Emergency Department Boarding and Crowding

By: Brian Franklin, Sharif Vakili, Robert S. Huckman, Sarah Hosein, Nicholas Falk, Katherine Cheng, Maria Murray, Sheila Harris, Charles A. Morris and Eric Goralnick

Delayed access to inpatient beds for admitted patients contributes significantly to emergency department (ED) boarding and crowding, which have been associated with deleterious patient safety effects. To expedite inpatient bed availability, some hospitals have... View Details

Keywords: Health Care Delivery; Emergency Room; Operations Improvement; Operations Management; Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Operations; Management; Performance Improvement; Service Operations

Find at Harvard

May 2008 (Revised April 2018)
Case

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: Interdisciplinary Cancer Care

By: Michael E. Porter and Sachin H. Jain

In 2006, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center was an internationally leading institution for cancer care, education, and research. Since 1996, it had successfully reorganized itself from a cancer hospital that was physically organized around clinical... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Health Disorders; Organizational Structure; Medical Specialties; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Value Creation; Service Delivery; Research; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Health Industry; Texas

18 Oct 2016
Op-Ed

Why Business Should Invest in Community Health

healthy workers, benefit their reputations, and engender greater consumer and employee loyalty. Healthy communities also have more money to spend on non health care products and View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch, Howard Koh, and Pamela Yatsko; Health

10 Nov 2016
News

Bringing the Power of Platforms to Heath Care

Keywords: healthcare; disruptive innovation; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Ambulatory Health Care Services

01 Sep 2011
News

Student Trio Advance Health Payment Reform

focused on how to calculate a fixed price for all services related to a specific condition — knee replacement. (The hospital is nationally recognized for expertise in orthopedic surgery.) The “bundled” price would cover everything from... View Details

Keywords: bundling; Health, Social Assistance

2014
Working Paper

The Diseconomies of Queue Pooling: An Empirical Investigation of Emergency Department Length of Stay

By: Hummy Song, Anita L. Tucker and Karen L. Murrell

We conduct an empirical investigation of the impact of queue management on patients' average wait time and length of stay (LOS). Using an Emergency Department's (ED) patient-level data from 2007 to 2010, we find that patients' average wait time and LOS are longer when... View Details

Keywords: Pooling; Queue Management; Strategic Servers; Social Loafing; Empirical Operations; Health Care; Fairness; Management Practices and Processes; Service Delivery; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry