Varian Medical Systems - Publications - Faculty & Research

15 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

A Better Business Model for Fighting Cancer

system to speed delivery of targeted therapies to the marketplace. “Early on, people would ask us why the (Harvard) business school, and not the medical school, was the recipient of this gift,” says... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health; Pharmaceutical

05 Jun 2006
Research & Ideas

Using Competition to Reform Healthcare

The ills of the U.S. healthcare system are well chronicled—soaring costs, low customer satisfaction, increasing problems with quality, and restricted coverage lead the list. But do we really understand the underlying issues well enough to... View Details

Keywords: by Michael E. Porter; Health

12 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

Competition the Cure for Healthcare

D. Anderson Cancer Center, and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, which are moving toward results measurement and integrated practice unit structures. Reforming the U.S. system does not require a top down,... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Health

15 Feb 2000
Research & Ideas

Growing Pains: Prescriptions for U.S. Health Care

gravely ill, HBS professor Clayton Christensen finds its prognosis encouraging. These symptoms, he says, merely reflect inefficient delivery systems that market forces have already begun to reshape. Christensen's optimistic outlook stems... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Health

22 Feb 2010
Research & Ideas

Manager Visibility No Guarantee of Fixing Problems

encountering. Drawn from the health-care industry, the research is based on a sample of 69 randomly selected hospitals, 20 of which participated in a three-part cycle of process improvement activities. Focusing on one area of the hospital at a time, the hospital's top... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health

27 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

Employee-Suggestion Programs That Work

through the cracks.” Fixing By Walking Around The program the researchers tested was modeled on Allan Frankel's "Leadership WalkRounds," which has been shown to improve safety in various medical facilities. His hypothesis was that... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Guttry

04 May 2007
What Do You Think?

How Do Managers Think?

in which it is carried out. Joe Schmid observed that "both medical doctors and organizational managers work in cultures that are historically problem definition poor and solution rich. Their individual rewards View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

11 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

Germany May Have the Answer for Reducing Drug Prices

medical care, a financial burden that forces some consumers to skip doses or forgo treatment. The US isn’t Germany While Germany's approach offers a relevant policy example, the country's health system... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Health

12 Jan 2018
Cold Call Podcast

Leadership Lessons from a Young Martin Luther King, Jr.

Kenny: They also encouraged him to continue his education, which was highly unusual at that time, right? George: Well, certainly for a minister as well. I mean, if an African American was fortunate enough to get into medical school or law... View Details

13 Dec 2006
Research & Ideas

Improving Public Health for the Poor

thought of before. It's one thing to say, "You need to change your system of cooking." Perhaps you could solve it better by saying, "There's a much more efficient way for you to cure your meats." In a sense, the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

12 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

Buy-In from Black Patients Suffers When Drug Trials Don’t Include Them

Black patients and their doctors may be more open to new medications if drug trials included more Black people, new research shows. Currently, Black Americans represent just 5 percent of drug trial participants. Nearly three-quarters of... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Pharmaceutical; Health

12 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

Regulators Ease Up on Companies Generating Political Benefits

doing something—usually donating money—to set it in motion. “My results suggest the more you treat the uninsured and the more you provide medical education the less likely you will be subject to these enforcement actions” But what if... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

12 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Solving COVID'S Mental Health Crisis

encouraged and instructed teens how to safely dispose of unused prescription medications in their homes. “Several thousand teens participated online or watched replays,” Langford says. SUD treatment providers are also searching for ways... View Details

Keywords: by Howard Stevenson and Shirley Spence; Health

April 2012
Article

Broadening Focus: Spillovers, Complementarities and Specialization in the Hospital Industry

By: Jonathan R. Clark and Robert S. Huckman

The long-standing argument that focused operations outperform others stands in contrast to claims about the benefits of broader operational scope. The performance benefits of focus are typically attributed to reduced complexity, lower uncertainty, and the development... View Details

Keywords: Performance Capacity; Operations; Advertising; Production; Corporate Strategy; Relationships; Medical Specialties; Complexity; Risk and Uncertainty; Experience and Expertise; Diversification; Quality; Health Industry

Citation

Find at Harvard

08 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

How to Fix a Broken Marketplace

An economic handyman of sorts, Alvin E. Roth fixes broken markets. As a Nobel Prize-winning pioneer in the field of market design, the Harvard Business School professor cofounded a kidney donation matching system for New England,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

23 Oct 2012
First Look

First Look: October 23

allowable constraints. The method then designs a point system that is based on the selected priority criteria and approximately maximizes medical efficiency, i.e., life year gains from transplant, while... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

03 Sep 2020
Op-Ed

Why American Health Care Needs Its Own SEC

Employers, insurers, taxpayers, and individual consumers pay widely varying prices for treatments, medical technology, and for digital information of fluctuating quality. One patient may receive a small charge for a treatment, while... View Details

Keywords: by Regina E. Herzlinger; Health

01 Feb 2022
What Do You Think?

Is Concierge Management an Answer to the “Big Quit”?

needed an advocate in case of a serious health problem. In a sense, we needed inclusion and “voice” just as much as the employees Amy Edmondson wrote about in her book, The Fearless Organization. We needed access to the medical View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

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