Publications

Educators

Article

How Not to Cut Health Care Costs

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Derek A. Haas

Health care providers in much of the world are trying to respond to the tremendous pressure to reduce costs—but evidence suggests that many of their attempts are counterproductive, raising costs and sometimes decreasing the quality of care. Using evidence from field... View Details

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November 2023
Article

Effects of Remote Patient Monitoring Use on Care Outcomes Among Medicare Patients with Hypertension

By: Mitchell Tang, Carter Nakamoto, Ariel Dora Stern, Jose Zubizarreta, Felippe Marcondes, Lori Uscher-Pines, Lee Schwamm and Ateev Mehrotra

Background: Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a promising tool for improving chronic disease management. Use of RPM for hypertension monitoring is growing rapidly, raising concerns about increased spending. However, the effects of RPM are still... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Health Care and Treatment; Measurement and Metrics

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Article

Health Care Providers Need a Value Management Office

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Catherine H. MacLean, Alexander Dresner, Derek A. Haas and Thomas W. Feeley

Many health care organizations are striving to implement a value agenda that delivers better patient outcomes at lower cost, medical condition by medical condition. To accelerate the dissemination and adoption of the value agenda, across many more medical conditions,... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Value; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

09 Dec 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Mental Health in the Aftermath of Conflict

Keywords: by Quy-Toan Do & Lakshmi Iyer

October 19, 2015
Article

Getting Bundled Payments Right in Health Care

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Derek A. Haas, Dereesa Reid, Jonathan Warsh and Michael E. West

Bundled payments—single payments that cover all the care for a patient’s medical condition or treatment over a specified timeframe—are increasingly being deployed to motivate the delivery of better patient outcomes at lower costs. Hoag Orthopedic Institute (HOI), a... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Product Marketing; Health Industry

05 Sep 2012
What Do You Think?

Will Business Management Save US Health Care?

for-profit health care organization led to better patient outcomes at the same time that "provider engagement and feeling of satisfaction have increased, our costs have fallen and our net profit has... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Health

23 Nov 2009
Research & Ideas

Management’s Role in Reforming Health Care

Aligning the Nature and Management of Health Care (Harvard Business Press, 2009), explains how to create more knowledgeable, flexible, and responsive delivery organizations. “Some of the most important innovations are not technologic—they... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

Other Article

My Favorite Slide: The Entrepreneurial Gap Applied to Health Care

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Robert Simons

Value-based health care increases physicians’ accountability for patient outcomes. Many have resisted, claiming that patient outcomes are influenced by many forces outside their control, such as patient’s compliance with post-acute and rehab care. The difference... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Motivation and Incentives

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16 Jul 2008
Op-Ed

What Should Employers Do about Health Care?

must expect health plans to direct patients to excellent providers, not those provider networks that offer the biggest discounts.” What to do? The most important single change necessary is for employers to think about View Details

Keywords: by Michael E. Porter, Elizabeth O. Teisberg & Scott Wallace; Health

Article

Value-based Healthcare: Implications for Thyroid Cancer

By: A.K. Ying, T.W. Feeley and M. E. Porter

Today's delivery of care to thyroid cancer patients is complex, and costly, with uneven outcomes that can be improved. The incidence of thyroid cancer is rising and requires coordinated, multidisciplinary care with high volume centers that is not always available in... View Details

Keywords: Bundled Reimbursement; Healthcare Reform; Integrated Practice Units; Outcomes; Patient-reported Outcomes; Thyroid Cancer; Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Information Technology; Value

03 Sep 2020
Op-Ed

Why American Health Care Needs Its Own SEC

see which clinicians, hospitals, insurers, and others provide the best value." Even if the Trump rules hold up, they cannot provide the full accounting of prices and outcomes the health care system... View Details

Keywords: by Regina E. Herzlinger; Health

May 2025
Case

Dell Med: Transforming Care Delivery & Payment

By: Robert S. Kaplan, David N. Bernstein and Mary L. Witkowski

Health care in the U.S. and globally continues to undergo massive transformation, surging towards a system that rewards value for patients. However, widespread adoption of value-based health care remains a challenge. This case study focuses on the care delivery... View Details

Keywords: Integrated Practice Units; Outcomes Measurement; Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Health Care and Treatment; Business Strategy; Leading Change; Decisions; Transformation; Service Delivery; Adoption; Value; Health Industry; United States; Texas

Educators

February 2024
Article

Investing in Long-Term Health

By: Katherine Baicker and Amitabh Chandra

Keywords: Insurance; Outcome or Result; Health Care and Treatment

Read Now

27 Feb 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

How Following Best Business Practices Can Improve Health Care

accounting have to do with improving patient outcomes in Haiti? HBS faculty members discuss their research and what it means for patients, providers, and industries. A Good Place to Start Clayton Christensen on Disrupting View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health; Health

29 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

The $1 Trillion Link Between Mental Health and Economic Productivity

mental health is an outcome of improvements in economic development.” “We haven’t been as good at understanding the link between mental health and economics as we could be” A... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

July 2015
Background Note

The State of U.S. Public Health: Challenges and Trends

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Howard Koh and Pamela Yatsko

The World Health Organization defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity." For many Americans, the World Health Organization's definition of true health seems unattainable, given... View Details

Keywords: Public Health; Public Sector; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States

Educators

26 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

National Health Costs Could Decrease if Managers Reduce Work Stress

them," says Goh. Making The Stress-health Connection Unlike in Europe, little or no data exists in the US that correlates exposure to workplace stress with health outcomes or View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

November 2015
Article

Influence of Experience and the Surgical Learning Curve on Long-term Patient Outcomes in Cardiac Surgery

By: Bryan M. Burt, Andrew W. ElBardissi, Robert S. Huckman, Lawrence H. Cohn, Marisa W. Cevasco, James D. Rawn, Sary F. Aranki and John G. Byrne

OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that increased post-graduate surgical experience correlates with improved operative efficiency and long-term survival in standard cardiac surgery procedures.

METHODS: Utilizing a prospectively collected retrospective database,... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Value; Health Care and Treatment; Experience and Expertise; Health Industry

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November 2024
Article

The Health Costs of Cost Sharing

By: Amitabh Chandra, Evan Flack and Ziad Obermeyer

What happens when patients suddenly stop their medications? We study the health consequences of drug interruptions caused by large, abrupt, and arbitrary changes in price. Medicare’s prescription drug benefit as-if-randomly assigns 65-year-olds a drug budget as a... View Details

Keywords: Outcome or Result; Health Care and Treatment; Budgets and Budgeting; Cost