Publications

February 2024
Article

An Economic Framework for Vaccine Prioritization

By: Mohammad Akbarpour, Eric Budish, Piotr Dworczak and Scott Duke Kominers

We propose an economic framework for determining the optimal allocation of a scarce supply of vaccines that become gradually available during a public health crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Agents differ in observable and unobservable characteristics, and the... View Details

Keywords: Vaccine; Fairness; Public Finance; Public Goods; Allocation Problems; Allocative Efficiency; Allocation Rules; Social Welfare; Pandemics; Inequality; COVID-19; COVID-19 Pandemic; Public Sector; Resource Allocation; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Public Administration Industry

SSRN

January 2024
Article

Cost of Exempting Sole Orphan Drugs from Medicare Negotiation

By: Matthew Vogel, Olivia Zhao, William B. Feldman, Amitabh Chandra, Aaron S. Kesselheim and Benjamin N. Rome

Importance: The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) requires Medicare to negotiate prices for some high-spending drugs but exempts drugs approved solely for the treatment of a single rare disease.
Objective: To estimate Medicare spending and global... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Price; Health Industry

January 2024
Article

Helping Children Catch Up: Early Life Shocks and the PROGRESA Experiment

By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Theresa Molina, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo

Can investing in children who faced adverse events in early childhood help them catch up? We answer this question using two orthogonal sources of variation – resource availability at birth (local rainfall) and cash incentives for school enrollment – to identify the... View Details

Keywords: Children; Outcome or Result; Welfare; Early Childhood Education; Weather

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

November 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

BiomX: Bringing Phage Back to the Stage

By: Paul A. Gompers, Elie Ofek, Orna Dan and Emilie Billaud

In the spring of 2023, and following the favorable results of a trial involving its phage cocktail for treating lung infections among cystic fibrosis (CF) patients, the leadership of BiomX had several critical issues to wrestle with. First, given its precarious... View Details

Keywords: Working Capital; Financing and Loans; Health Testing and Trials; Product Development; Research and Development; Science-Based Business; Commercialization; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

2025
Working Paper

Healthcare Provider Bankruptcies

By: Samuel Antill, Ashvin Gandhi, Jessica Bai and Adrienne Sabety

Healthcare firms are filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy at record rates. We find that bankruptcies increase healthcare staff turnover, worsen care, and harm patients. Using a difference-in-differences design, we estimate that a bankruptcy filing immediately increases... View Details

Keywords: Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Retention; Health Industry

2023
Working Paper

Are Hospital Quality Indicators Causal?

By: Amitabh Chandra, Maurice Dalton and Douglas O. Staiger

Hospitals play a key role in patient outcomes and spending, but efforts to improve their quality are hindered because we do not know whether hospital quality indicators are causal or biased. We evaluate the validity of commonly used quality indicators, such as... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Health Care and Treatment; Measurement and Metrics; Outcome or Result; Health Industry

Register to Read

2023
Article

Evidence from the First Shared Medical Appointments (SMAs) Randomised Controlled Trial in India: SMAs Increase the Satisfaction, Knowledge, and Medication Compliance of Patients with Glaucoma

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

In Shared Medical Appointments (SMAs), patients with similar conditions meet the physician together and each receives one-on-one attention. SMAs can improve outcomes and physician productivity. Yet privacy concerns have stymied adoption. In physician-deprived nations,... View Details

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

March 2023 (Revised March 2024)
Case

The Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy: Settling the Opioid Crisis

By: Kristin Mugford, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Susan Pinckney

How to get to a fair outcome for claimants in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy given its significant role in the U.S. opioid crisis. View Details

March 2023 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Close Concerns: Diabetes Research and Advocacy

By: Regina Herzlinger and Brian L. Walker

Diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 18, Kelly Close understood the importance of balancing consistency and iteration. This principle had also informed her professional work, which started with a rapid promotion from financial analyst at Goldman Sachs to an analyst... View Details

Keywords: Diabetes; Health; Health Care; Health Care And Treatment; Health Care Outcomes; Health Care Industry; Knowledge Dissemination; Outcome or Result; Equality and Inequality; Business Model; Entrepreneurship

March 2023 (Revised June 2023)
Teaching Note

Ransomware Attack at Springhill Medical Center

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan (Jason) Ni

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 123-065. In July, 2019, Springhill Medical Center (“SMC”) in Mobile, Alabama fell prey to a malicious ransomware attack that crippled the hospital’s internal network systems and public-facing web page. While the hospital rushed to... View Details

February 2023
Case

Ransomware Attack at Springhill Medical Center

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan (Jason) Ni

In July, 2019, Springhill Medical Center (“SMC”) in Mobile, Alabama, fell prey to a malicious ransomware attack that crippled the hospital’s internal network systems and public-facing web page. While the hospital rushed to securely restore the network, medical... View Details

February 2023
Article

Maintaining Health Care Innovations After the Pandemic

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Barak D. Richman and Kevin A. Schulman

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the worst failings of the health care system, but it also stimulated a flurry of innovations that could lead to a much-improved delivery system. These were innovations that were born out of necessity: telemedicine access and use... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Industry; Health Care Outcomes; Innovation; Innovation In Healthcare Delivery; COVID; COVID-19 Pandemic; Pandemics; Telemedicine; Telehealth; Ambulatory Care; Vaccines; Innovation and Invention; Change; Health Industry

2023
Book

Workplace Conditions

By: Jill Maben, Jane Ball and Amy C. Edmondson

This Element reviews the evidence for three workplace conditions that matter for improving quality and safety in healthcare: staffing; psychological safety, teamwork, and speaking up; and staff health and well-being at work. The authors propose that these are... View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Outcome or Result; Safety; Well-being; Health Industry

2022
Article

Investigating the Association Between Telemedicine Use and Timely Follow-Up Care After Acute Cardiovascular Hospital Encounters

By: Mitchell Tang, A Jay Holmgren, Erin E. McElrath, Ankeet S. Bhatt, Anubodh S. Varshney, Simin Gharib Lee, Muthiah Vaduganathan, Dale S. Adler and Robert S. Huckman

Background: Telemedicine use increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, questions remain as to how telemedicine use impacts care.
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the association of increased telemedicine use on rates of... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Telemedicine; Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Behavior; Health Industry; United States

Winter 2022
Article

Vaccines and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from Failure and Success

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alex Tabarrok

The losses from the global COVID-19 pandemic have been staggering—trillions in economic costs, on top of significant losses of life, health, and well-being. The world made significant and successful investments in vaccines to mitigate the pandemic, yet there were... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Vaccination; Market Design; Health Pandemics; Loss; Outcome or Result; Opportunities; Crisis Management

November 2022
Case

Ajax Health: A New Model for Medical Technology Innovation

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ben Creo

This case teaches key success factors for both startup and established MedTech firms. It examines how to structure a firm to maximize innovation and financial returns with organizational structures that better align the incentives for the different skill sets... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Success; Innovation Strategy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Market Entry and Exit; Financial Strategy; Business Model; Partners and Partnerships; Entrepreneurship; Private Equity; Technology Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

November 2022
Article

Measuring Inequality beyond the Gini Coefficient May Clarify Conflicting Findings

By: Kristin Blesch, Oliver P. Hauser and Jon M. Jachimowicz

Prior research has found mixed results on how economic inequality is related to various outcomes. These contradicting findings may in part stem from a predominant focus on the Gini coefficient, which only narrowly captures inequality. Here, we conceptualize the... View Details

Keywords: Economic Inequalty; Gini Coefficient; Income Inequality; Equality and Inequality; Social Issues; Health; Status and Position

October 2022
Article

It’s Not Just the Prices: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing for Initiation of Veno-Venous Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation at Three International Sites—A Case Review

By: Michael Nurok, Vin Pellegrino, Marc Pineton de Chambrun, Jonathan Warsh, Meredith Young, Erik Dong, Neil Parrish, Syed Shehab, Alain Combes and Robert S. Kaplan

The United States spends more for intensive care units (ICUs) than do other high-income countries. We used time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) to analyze ICU costs for initiation of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for respiratory failure to estimate... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Cost; Time-Driven ABC; Health Care and Treatment; Cost Management; Activity Based Costing and Management; Health Industry