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- All HBS Web
(770)
- People (1)
- News (78)
- Research (603)
- Events (6)
- Multimedia (1)
- Faculty Publications (270)
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- 2017
- Working Paper
Identifying Sources of Inefficiency in Health Care
By: Amitabh Chandra and Douglas O. Staiger
In medicine, the reasons for variation in treatment rates across hospitals serving similar patients are not well understood. Some interpret this variation as unwarranted and push standardization of care as a way of reducing allocative inefficiency. However, an... View Details
Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Performance Efficiency; Performance Productivity; Mathematical Methods
Chandra, Amitabh, and Douglas O. Staiger. "Identifying Sources of Inefficiency in Health Care." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 24035, November 2017.
- 09 Jan 2018
- Working Paper Summaries
Identifying Sources of Inefficiency in Health Care
- June 2012
- Case
Reconfiguring Stroke Care in North Central London
By: Michael E. Porter, James Mountford, Kamalini Ramdas and Samuel Takvorian
In 2006, surgeon Ara Darzi identified several key areas, including acute stroke care, for improving health care across London. In response to his seminal call to action, stroke care was reorganized around eight hyper-acute stroke units covering London's five sectors,... View Details
Keywords: Health Care; Health Care and Treatment; Performance Improvement; Performance Efficiency; Integration; Health Industry; London
Porter, Michael E., James Mountford, Kamalini Ramdas, and Samuel Takvorian. "Reconfiguring Stroke Care in North Central London ." Harvard Business School Case 712-496, June 2012.
- March 7, 2025
- Article
Leaders Can Move Fast and Fix Things
By: Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss
The assumption embedded in Silicon Valley’s famous “move fast and break things” ethos is that we can either make progress or take care of people, one or the other. A certain amount of wreckage is the price we have to pay for creating the future. The authors have spent... View Details
Frei, Frances X., and Anne Morriss. "Leaders Can Move Fast and Fix Things." Harvard Business Review (website) (March 7, 2025).
- 12 Nov 2018
- Research & Ideas
'Always On' Isn't Always Best for Team Decision-Making
collaboration encouraged by today’s communication tools like Slack and Skype good or bad for finding the best answer? “I don’t want there to be zero communication, but I do think that transparency and communication do have downsides" To find out, the researchers... View Details
Keywords: by Roberta Holland
- October 2016
- Article
Technical Debt and System Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Defect-related Activity
By: Alan MacCormack and Daniel J. Sturtevant
Technical debt is created when design decisions that are expedient in the short-term increase the costs of maintaining and adapting this system in future. An important component of technical debt relates to decisions about system architecture. As systems grow and... View Details
Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Performance Efficiency; Applications and Software; Infrastructure
MacCormack, Alan, and Daniel J. Sturtevant. "Technical Debt and System Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Defect-related Activity." Journal of Systems and Software 120 (October 2016): 170–182. (Received 31 May 2015. Revised 28 May 2016. Accepted 4 June 2016.)
- May 2020
- Article
Identifying Sources of Inefficiency in Health Care
By: Amitabh Chandra and Douglas O. Staiger
In medicine, the reasons for variation in treatment rates across hospitals serving similar patients are not well understood. Some interpret this variation as unwarranted and push standardization of care as a way of reducing allocative inefficiency. However, an... View Details
Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Performance Efficiency; Performance Productivity; Mathematical Methods
Chandra, Amitabh, and Douglas O. Staiger. "Identifying Sources of Inefficiency in Health Care." Quarterly Journal of Economics 135, no. 2 (May 2020): 785–843.
- 01 Apr 2014
- Research & Ideas
When Do Alliances Make Sense?
expertise, and spreading out risk. On the other hand, forming alliances also requires coordinating tasks and merging cultures, which can often be difficult and costly to achieve. Business theorists have long pursued this question in an effort to determine the best and... View Details
- June 2018
- Supplement
Feeding America (B)
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alan Lam
Supplements the (A) case. View Details
Keywords: Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Food; Resource Allocation; Fairness; Performance Efficiency; United States
Kominers, Scott Duke, and Alan Lam. "Feeding America (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 818-131, June 2018.
- September 2018
- Article
Discretionary Task Ordering: Queue Management in Radiological Services
By: Maria Ibanez, Jonathan R. Clark, Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats
Work-scheduling research typically prescribes task sequences implemented by managers. Yet employees often have discretion to deviate from their prescribed sequence. Using data from 2.4 million radiological diagnoses, we find that doctors prioritize similar tasks... View Details
Keywords: Discretion; Scheduling; Queue; Healthcare; Learning; Experience; Decentralization; Operations; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Performance; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement; Performance Productivity; Decisions; Time Management; Cost vs Benefits; Health Industry
Ibanez, Maria, Jonathan R. Clark, Robert S. Huckman, and Bradley R. Staats. "Discretionary Task Ordering: Queue Management in Radiological Services." Management Science 64, no. 9 (September 2018): 4389–4407. (Working paper available here. Winner of the 2017 Best Paper Competition of the POMS College of Healthcare Operations Management. Featured in Forbes, Quartz, and Inc.)
- 28 Nov 2011
- Research & Ideas
Rethinking the Fairness of Organ Transplants
Vivek F. Farias, both of MIT's Sloan School—can help policy designers create the most equitable point system based on their chosen constraints and criteria. They detail the proposed model in a new paper, Fairness, Efficiency and... View Details
- 2011
- Chapter
Changing Identity, Changing Language
By: Kathleen L. McGinn and Jeffrey T. Polzer
Environmental jolts and shifting membership challenge a group's efficacy and survival. Group identity is critical for a shared interpretation of and response to these challenges, but external and internal changes may require corresponding changes in a group's... View Details
Keywords: Change; Spoken Communication; Performance Efficiency; Problems and Challenges; Safety; Identity; California
McGinn, Kathleen L., and Jeffrey T. Polzer. "Changing Identity, Changing Language." In Advances in Group Processes. Vol. 28, edited by Shane R. Thye and Edward Lawler, 125–145. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing, 2011.
- 15 Nov 2010
- Lessons from the Classroom
Connecting Goals and Go-To-Market Initiatives
development, incentives, people management, developing a performance culture, and sustaining that culture in the face of inevitable market changes that are often outside the control of the selling company. And it's increasingly a bigger... View Details
- Article
Team Scaffolds: How Mesolevel Structures Enable Role-based Coordination in Temporary Groups
By: M. Valentine and A. C. Edmondson
This paper shows how meso-level structures support effective coordination in temporary groups. Prior research on coordination in temporary groups describes how roles encode individual responsibilities so that coordination between relative strangers is possible. We... View Details
Keywords: Fluid Personnel; Team Scaffolds; Team Effectiveness; Role-based Coordination; Multi-method; Service Delivery; Organizational Structure; Groups and Teams; Performance Efficiency
Valentine, M., and A. C. Edmondson. "Team Scaffolds: How Mesolevel Structures Enable Role-based Coordination in Temporary Groups." Organization Science 26, no. 2 (March–April 2015): 405–422.
- May 2010
- Teaching Note
Offering the Right Service in the Right Place: Growing Orthopedics at the Brigham and Women's/Faulkner (BW/F) Hospitals (TN)
By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem
Teaching Note for [108016]. View Details
- August 23, 2018
- Article
Using a New EHR System to Increase Patient Engagement, Improve Efficiency, and Decrease Cost
By: Katy French, Barbra Bryce Speer, Alexis B. Guzman, Tayab Andrabi, Iris Recinos, Keith A. Shook, James R. Incalcaterra, John C. Frenzel and Thomas W. Feeley
Patients and providers are frustrated with seemingly endless data entry. We used our patients’ vested interest in their own health care by actively engaging them in the entry of their own medical information into the EHR. Prior to the implementation of the new EHR we... View Details
Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Analytics and Data Science; Performance Efficiency; Cost Management
French, Katy, Barbra Bryce Speer, Alexis B. Guzman, Tayab Andrabi, Iris Recinos, Keith A. Shook, James R. Incalcaterra, John C. Frenzel, and Thomas W. Feeley. "Using a New EHR System to Increase Patient Engagement, Improve Efficiency, and Decrease Cost." NEJM Catalyst (August 23, 2018).
- March 2006
- Background Note
Customer-Introduced Variability in Service Operations
By: Frances X. Frei
Presents a typology of customer-introduced variability and offers guidance on how to manage each type. Central to the ideas developed is how to mitigate the effects of the apparent trade-off between reducing variability and diminishing the service experience or... View Details
Frei, Frances X. "Customer-Introduced Variability in Service Operations." Harvard Business School Background Note 606-063, March 2006.
- 06 Nov 2013
- What Do You Think?
Is Top-Down Resource Allocation on the Rise?
be familiar with specific opportunities) manages the context—organization, the way managerial performance is measured and rewarded, etc.—that shapes definition of opportunities and the selection of those to be supported. In this view,... View Details
Keywords: by James Heskett
- August 1994
- Case
Higashimaru Shoyu Company, Ltd. (A): Price Control System
Illustrates how Japanese firms use profit pressures to increase efficiency. In particular, explores how pseudo profit centers create pressure on workers to increase revenues and reduce costs, and the use of semiautonomous teams in a traditional Japanese workforce. View Details
Keywords: Cost Management; Groups and Teams; Organizational Structure; Performance Efficiency; Management Systems; Japan
Cooper, Robin. "Higashimaru Shoyu Company, Ltd. (A): Price Control System." Harvard Business School Case 195-050, August 1994.
- March 2021 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
Philips: Redefining Telehealth
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Alec Petersen, Natalie Kindred and Sara M. McKinley
As one of the world’s largest healthcare companies, Philips sought to reach beyond the walls of the hospital and expand its hospital-to-home program to gain future competitive advantage through technology solutions combining predictive analytics with care delivery. By... View Details
Keywords: Health Care; Philips; Visicu; Telemedicine; eICU; Accountable Care Organization; ACO; Bundled Payment; Hospital To Home; Patient Monitoring Devices; Home Health Care; Health Care and Treatment; Communication Technology; Quality; Safety; Performance Productivity; Performance Capacity; Performance Efficiency; Consumer Behavior; Emerging Markets; Health Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Netherlands
Herzlinger, Regina E., Alec Petersen, Natalie Kindred, and Sara M. McKinley. "Philips: Redefining Telehealth." Harvard Business School Case 321-135, March 2021. (Revised January 2022.) (As companion reading for this case, see: Regina E. Herzlinger and Charles Huang. "Note on Bundled Payment in Health Care," HBS Background Note 312-032.)