Publications

February 2019
Article

Who Benefits Most in Disease Management Programs: Improving Target Efficiency

By: Timothy Simcoe, Maryaline Catillon and Paul Gertler

Disease management programs aim to reduce cost by improving the quality of care for chronic diseases. Evidence of their effectiveness is mixed. Reducing health care spending sufficiently to cover program costs has proved particularly challenging. This study uses a... View Details

Keywords: Health Economics; Target Efficiency; Diabetes; Disease Management; Program Evaluation; Heterogeneity; Economics; Health; Quality; Health Care and Treatment; Cost Management; Health Industry

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September 2011 (Revised August 2014)
Background Note

Note on Bundled Payment in Health Care

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Charles C. Huang

The note explains how bundled health care payment differs from fee-for-service payment, provides examples of the difference between the two, describes early innovators in bundling and their results, provides guidance on how to make it happen, and elucidates the legal... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Price; Cost Management; Health Industry

November 2016 (Revised April 2017)
Case

Hygeia Group: Delivering Quality Care in Nigeria

By: Robert F. Higgins and Ifedayo O. Kuye

Fola Laoye is the Group Managing Director of Hygeia Group, a Nigerian healthcare insurer and provider, and she is deciding on the optimal strategy to grow the provider arm of her business. Hygeia Group was founded in the 1980s by her physician parents, and although... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Healthcare Industry; Hospitals; Nigeria; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; Nigeria

04 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Is Health Care Making You Better—or Dead?

have written this book when you were writing Market-Driven Health Care (1996) or Consumer-Driven Health Care (2004)? A: I think at the time of Market-Driven Health Care, people were still delirious about the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health

February 2017 (Revised February 2021)
Case

Hebrew SeniorLife: Next Steps

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Olivia Hull

The CEO of Hebrew SeniorLife is contemplating how to scale his highly successful but asset-intensive continuing care retirement community for elders. Among the strategies he is considering is an expansion to China; virtual web-based care; providing continuing care in... View Details

Keywords: Continuing Care; Nursing Home; Rehabilitation; Assisted Living; Elder Care; Entrepreneurial Management; Health Care and Treatment; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; United States

15 Feb 2000
Research & Ideas

Growing Pains: Prescriptions for U.S. Health Care

We know the symptoms all too well. We wait months to see a doctor. Office visits end, it seems, just moments after they begin. Managed care firms hold sway over doctors' treatment plans, and health insurance... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Health

07 Mar 2000
Research & Ideas

Putting Health Care Consumers in the Driver’s Seat

A mid-November conference on consumer-driven health care attracted nearly two hundred providers of health-care services, technology, and information; government professionals; and insurance executives to the HBS campus for a two-day... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Health

Article

Equitable and Efficient Coordination in Traffic Flow Management

By: Cynthia Barnhart, Dimitris Bertsimas, Constantine Caramanis and Douglas S. Fearing

When air traffic demand is projected to exceed capacity, the FAA implements Traffic Flow Management programs. Independently, these programs maintain a first-scheduled, first-served invariant, which is the accepted standard of fairness within the industry. Coordinating... View Details

Keywords: Traffic Flow Management; Ground Holding Programs; Equitable Flight Delay; Equity; Saving; Management; Management Practices and Processes; Demand and Consumers; Performance Capacity; Performance Efficiency; Conflict and Resolution; System; Aerospace Industry

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03 Sep 2020
Op-Ed

Why American Health Care Needs Its Own SEC

medicine. They do not know if they received good value for the money. Partially as a result of this lack of transparency, increases in employers’ health care costs have outstripped inflation and workers’ wage increases for decades.... View Details

Keywords: by Regina E. Herzlinger; Health

Article

Managing Healthcare Costs and Value

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Michael E. Porter and Mark L. Frigo

Rising health care costs are a major global challenge. A number of factors contribute to this trend, including aging populations and medical technology. But an underlying and misunderstood source of health care’s escalating costs has been the inability of health care... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Cost Management; Cost Accounting; Health Industry

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February 1987 (Revised August 1988)
Case

Gillette Personal Care Division: Marketing Planning and Control

Bill Ryan, president of the Gillette Co.'s Personal Care Division, is considering changing the division's planning and control system for marketing. White Rain, the division's most recent success, had been launched by taking shortcuts through the system, while other... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Management Systems; Consumer Products Industry; United States

June 10, 2021
Article

Preparing Hospitals for the Next Pandemic

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman

The COVID-19 epidemic response has shown that the U.S. is blessed with heroic physicians and other health care providers, researchers, and facilities. But it has also revealed a health care system that was woefully unprepared for the surge of pandemic patients. In the... View Details

Keywords: Hospital; Hospital Management; Hospitals—administration; Health Care; Health Care Industry; Health Care Investment; Health Care Operations; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Operations; Performance Improvement; Investment; Health Industry; United States

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03 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

HBS Faculty on Supreme Court Health Care Ruling

experts in the health care field, to provide their views on various facets of one of this country's most important and complex problems. Bill George Professor of Management Practice, former chair and CEO of... View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty; Health

September 2007 (Revised January 2009)
Case

Reading Rehabilitation Hospital: Implementing Patient-Focused Care (A) (Abridged)

By: Roy D. Shapiro

Reading Rehab Hospital has experimented with a popular concept in health care--patient-focused care--intended to increase quality and reduce costs by organizing care delivery around particular diagnoses or "service lines," rather than around the functions or... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Medical Specialties; Quality; Cost; Management Practices and Processes; Business Strategy; Service Delivery; Health Industry

April 2009 (Revised May 2010)
Case

Partners In Health: HIV Care in Rwanda

By: Michael E. Porter, Scott S. Lee, Joseph Rhatigan and Jim Yong Kim

In 2005, Partners in Health (PIH) was invited by the Rwandan Ministry of Health to assume responsibility for the management of public health care in two rural districts in Eastern Rwanda and create an HIV treatment program at these sites. PIH successfully implemented a... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Health Care and Treatment; Health Testing and Trials; Medical Specialties; Service Delivery; Nonprofit Organizations; Expansion; Health Industry; Rwanda

January 2018
Case

Partners In Health: Costing Primary Care in Haiti

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Mahek A. Shah

Partners in Health, a global NGO focused on delivering health care to residents of rural underserved communities, conducts a project on the cost of primary care at five sites in the Central Highlands of Haiti. It devises a simple approach for tracking the resources... View Details

Keywords: Global Health; Public Health; Health Care and Treatment; Activity Based Costing and Management; Cost Accounting; Rural Scope; Health Industry; Haiti