Publications

2009
Working Paper

Input Constraints and the Efficiency of Entry: Lessons from Cardiac Surgery

By: David M. Cutler, Robert S. Huckman and Jonathan T. Kolstad

Prior studies suggest that, with elastically supplied inputs, free entry may lead to an inefficiently high number of firms in equilibrium. Under input scarcity, however, the welfare loss from free entry is reduced. Further, free entry may increase use of high-quality... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Health Care and Treatment; Medical Specialties; Market Entry and Exit; Welfare; Health Industry; Pennsylvania

November 2016 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Improving Access at VA

By: Ryan W. Buell, Robert S. Huckman and Sam Travers

In 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ran the largest healthcare system in the United States, with over 1,700 sites of care that served nearly 9 million veterans. One year earlier, a scandal had erupted over a cover-up of the excessive wait times veterans... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Service Delivery; Social Issues; Health Care and Treatment; Government Administration; Performance Improvement; Public Administration Industry; Health Industry; United States

27 Sep 2016
First Look

September 27, 2016

concentration in the origins of invention. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51660 Cohort Turnover and Operational Performance: The July Phenomenon in Teaching Hospitals By: Song, Hummy, Robert View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Using the Balanced Scorecard for Successful Health Care M&A Integration

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The failure of merged organizations to achieve stated goals is commonplace. In health care, the challenge is exacerbated by the industry’s third-party payer system and multiple stakeholders, especially the physicians in the merging entities. This article describes how... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Mergers and Acquisitions; Integration; Balanced Scorecard

January 1993 (Revised April 1993)
Case

Chadwick, Inc.: The Balanced Scorecard

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The pharmaceutical division of a diversified company has been asked to develop a Balanced Scorecard. Research and development projects take about ten years to bring a new product to the marketplace and the division depends on good relations and active feedback from its... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Performance Evaluation; Customer Relationship Management; Goals and Objectives; Customer Satisfaction; Research and Development; Marketplace Matching; Financial Condition; Product Launch; Pharmaceutical Industry

01 Feb 2002
News

It's academic. (Not!)

If your idea of a Ph.D. in business conjures up visions of spectacled scholars toiling in solitude in the library's darkest, dustiest corners, think again. At HBS, students in the School's Doctoral Programs are doing much more than theorizing and crunching numbers.... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

Web

Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business | HBS Online

performance. 6 weeks, 7-9 hrs/week Pay by September 11 $1,850 Certificate Strategy Execution Professor Robert Simons Gain the tools, skills, and frameworks to successfully implement strategy within your... View Details

December 2015
Article

Task Shifting in Surgery: Lessons from an Indian Heart Hospital

By: Budhaditya Gupta, Robert S. Huckman and Tarun Khanna

We present a case study that illustrates task shifting, the transfer of activities from senior to junior colleagues, in the context of cardiac surgery at the Narayana Health City Cardiac Hospital (NH) in India. The case discusses the factors driving the adoption of... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Rank and Position; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; India

Find at Harvard

27 Sep 2011
First Look

First Look: September 27

Authors:Jonathan R. Clark, Robert S. Huckman, and Bradley R. Staats Abstract The ongoing fragmentation of work has resulted in a narrowing of tasks into smaller and smaller pieces that can be sent outside... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2018
Article

Hospital Budget Systems are Holding Back Innovation

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Michael S. Jellinek and Derek A. Haas

Nearly 800 digital health startups were funded in 2017, an all-time high. Each of the new companies offers the hope of transforming the performance of the U.S. health care system. The audience for such innovation wants to be receptive: A recent American Hospital... View Details

08 Nov 2011
First Look

First Look: Nov. 8

supplement:http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/311135-PDF-ENG Penn Warranty Corporation Richard S. Ruback and Royce YudkoffHarvard Business School Case 212-007 Penn Warranty Corporation sold warranty contracts to the used-car market.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Defining, Measuring, and Improving Value in Spine Care

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Derek Haas

This chapter discusses how to measure and improve spine care outcomes and costs. Today’s commonly used outcome metrics, such as readmission and complication rates, are actually process and quality metrics. They are not the outcomes, such as improvement in pain and... View Details

Keywords: Spine Care; Outcomes Measurement; Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Improvement; Value

September 2020
Case

Walmart Health: Scaling During a Pandemic

By: Robert S. Huckman, Yoonjin Min and Marissa Thiel

Amidst the onset of COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Marcus Obsborne, Vice President for Health and Wellness Transformation at Walmart was planning to scale its new health care clinic business, Walmart Health, to additional locations in Georgia and beyond.... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Health; Service Delivery; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; United States; Arkansas; Georgia (state, US); Texas

13 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 13

Huckman and Bradley R. Staats Abstract In this paper, we consider how fluid teams and fluid tasks interact to affect team performance. We study the effect of diversity in experience on a team's ability to respond to changing tasks View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

October 1990
Case

Manufacturers Hanover Corp.: Customer Profitability Report

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Banking company noting declining profitability from its traditional lending activities has started to measure the total profitability of its lending relationships. A loan pricing model estimates the profit and return-on-equity from commercial loans. Additional work was... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Revenue; Commercial Banking; Banks and Banking; Customer Value and Value Chain; Banking Industry

Web

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Awards & Honors - Faculty & Research

Economics Association for “Behavioral Hazard in Health Insurance” ( Quarterly Journal of Economics , November 2015) with K. Baicker and S. Mullainathan. 2015 Kathleen L. McGinn : Recipient of the 2015 Charles M. Williams Award for... View Details

September 2013 (Revised August 2024)
Exercise

Process Analytics Simulation: Solutions

By: Robert S. Huckman, Aizan Radzi, Willy Shih, Roy D. Shapiro and Michael W. Toffel

A set of exercises and instructions to be used with the Process Simulator software made by Pro Model. These exercises allow students to investigate the impact of variable processing times on the performance of simple in-line processes. Includes color exhibits. View Details

Keywords: Operations; Business Processes; Performance; Measurement and Metrics

May 2021
Article

Making Doctors Effective Managers and Leaders: A Matter of Health and Well-Being

By: Lisa Rotenstein, Robert S. Huckman and Christine K. Cassel

The COVID-19 crisis has forced physicians to make daily decisions that require knowledge and skills they did not acquire as part of their biomedical training. Physicians are being called upon to be both managers—able to set processes and structures—and leaders—capable... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Management; Leadership; Health Pandemics; Health Industry