Publications

May 2023 (Revised June 2023)
Case

Novartis (A): Reimagining Medicine

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Claudio Feser, Karolin Frankenberger and David Redaschi

This case unfolds around the first-ever approved personalized cancer treatment, how Novartis wrapped it into a new business model design, and how Novartis scaled it. Novartis — one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world — is, among other ventures,... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Business Model; Leadership; Pharmaceutical Industry; Switzerland

25 May 2016
Research & Ideas

How Consumers and Businesses are Reshaping Public Health

Editor's note. In the United States, a primary provider of health care is through employers. "Every corporation is a player in public health," writes John A. Quelch in a new book of case studies, Consumers, Corporations, and... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch; Health

July 2007 (Revised January 2008)
Case

Turnaround at the Veterans Health Administration (A)

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Brian R. Golden and Gary J. Young

Investigates the challenges that Dr. Kenneth W. Kizer confronted in seeking to create organizational change at the largest integrated health care system in North America, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Kizer was appointed as the Under Secretary of Health, to... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Transformation; Leadership; Consolidation; Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Health Industry; Public Administration Industry; North and Central America

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: Freeing Patient Data to Enable Innovation

customer experience is so poor across the health care industry. "Employers do. So there's no real driver for quality." Hsiang (HBS MBA 2010), a health data advisor for the White House's US Digital Service... View Details

Keywords: Re: Karim R. Lakhani; Health

January 2019 (Revised June 2019)
Technical Note

U.S. Commercial Health Insurance Industry

By: Susanna Gallani, Mary Witkowski and Harry B. Wolberg

This note describes the role of commercial payers in the U.S. healthcare industry. We begin with a review of the historical evolution of commercial payers and their role in the market, from the beginning to the Affordable Care Act and beyond. Every wave of reforms in... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Health Industry; Insurance Industry; United States

Profile

Angela R. Hicks Bowman

employees, along with 3 million members in more than 200 cities. The service now includes health care professionals, pet care and even offers a special subscriber list for... View Details

April 2024 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Unleashing Human Magic at Best Buy

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger, Sunil Gupta and Amram Migdal

The case examines the transformation of Best Buy under CEO Hubert Joly's leadership from 2012. Facing significant business challenges, including competition from online and physical retailers, Joly implemented the "Renew Blue" turnaround strategy, which focused on... View Details

September 2008 (Revised June 2013)
Case

Odyssey Healthcare

By: Robert F. Higgins, Virginia Fuller and Umer Raffat

In January 2001, Dick Burnham, CEO of Odyssey Healthcare, and Odyssey's Board of Directors were considering selling the hospice care company to a larger provider or making an initial public offering (IPO). With 38 hospice locations in 21 states, Odyssey had been... View Details

Keywords: Liquidity; Venture Creation/development; Hospice; Venture Capital; Financial Liquidity; Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Plan; Entrepreneurship; Health Industry; United States

February 1999 (Revised November 1999)
Case

HealthPartners

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer and Nancy Dean Beaulieu

Presents the efforts by HealthPartners to create competition among health care providers in Minnesota on the basis of both quality and price. Also provides some insight into the strategies for changing physician behavior. View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Behavior; Competition; Health Industry; Minnesota

Find at Harvard

05 Sep 2012
What Do You Think?

Will Business Management Save US Health Care?

Summing Up What Role Will Management Play in Saving US Health Care? The verdict is in, according to respondents of this month's column: Problems confronting health care in the US are much larger and broader than those that can be solved... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Health

May 2023 (Revised June 2023)
Supplement

Novartis (B): Reimagining Medicine

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Claudio Feser, Karolin Frankenberger and David Redaschi

This case unfolds around the first-ever approved personalized cancer treatment, how Novartis wrapped it into a new business model design, and how Novartis scaled it. Novartis — one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world — is, among other ventures,... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Business Model; Production; Business Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry

May 2010
Article

Managing the New Primary Care: The New Skills That Will Be Needed

By: Richard Bohmer

Developing new models of primary care will demand a level of managerial expertise that few of today's primary care physicians possess. Yet medical schools continue to focus on the basic sciences, to the exclusion of such managerial topics as running effective teams.... View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Health Care and Treatment; Management Skills; Managerial Roles; Service Delivery; Practice; Health Industry

Find at Harvard

12 Nov 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Social Networks, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship

Keywords: by William R. Kerr & Martin Mandorff; Service; Service; Service; Service

Article

Can Big-Box Retailers Provide Local Health Care?

By: Robert S. Huckman

National retailers, most notably Walmart and Best Buy, are making big bets on their ability to fill this need for local health care. At first glance, these moves are a bit surprising given that these companies have not traditionally been focused on health care... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Local Range; Retail Industry; Health Industry

Register to Read

06 May 2015
What Do You Think?

Are You Ready for Personalized Predictive Analytics?

Summing Up Personal Predictive Analytics: Should We Be Careful What We Wish For? The world of continuous monitoring of numerous sensors for machines and humans, limitless information storage capacity, and big data combined with rapid... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

March 2019
Article

Evidence of Upcoding in Pay-for-Performance Programs

By: Hamsa Bastani, Joel Goh and Mohsen Bayati

Recent Medicare legislation seeks to improve patient care quality by financially penalizing providers for hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). However, Medicare cannot directly monitor HAI rates and instead relies on providers accurately self-reporting HAIs in claims... View Details

Keywords: Medical Coding; Health Policy; Healthcare-acquired Conditions; Medicare; Health Care and Treatment; Policy; Performance Improvement; Quality; Measurement and Metrics; Government Legislation

SSRN

Find at Harvard

November 2011 (Revised December 2013)
Case

Accretive Health

By: William A. Sahlman and Evan Richardson

Mary Tolan, CEO Accretive Health, examines whether to expand the company's operations in hospital revenue cycle management into the field of Total Cost of Care management. View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Expansion; Service Operations; Health Industry

16 Jun 2009
First Look

First Look: June 16

privately owned health care provider in Sweden serving both public and private paying patients. In contrast to most providers in the country, GHP organized around specific service lines where it saw the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2025
Working Paper

Gastrointestinal Endoscopy--Without Cutting In: Case Histories of Transformational Advances

By: Amar Bhidé, Srikant M. Datar and Katherine Stebbins

This case history describes how endoscopy transformed the diagnosis of ulcers, cancerous polyps, and other alimentary canal diseases and enabled “minimally invasive” surgeries to treat such diseases. Specifically, we chronicle how: 1) flexible glass fiber endoscopes... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Technological Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Technology Adoption; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Invention; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms