Enduring Impact: Regina Herzlinger's Work Has Helped to Shape the Health-Care Field

These are busy times for Regina E. Herzlinger, the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration Chair at HBS. This marks the 20th year that she has taught the course Innovating in Health Care, a landmark that she speaks of with particular pride. "Twenty years ago I decided that the health-care system could absorb Harvard MBAs," she says. "I believed that as the field became more and more complex, MBA applicants would be desirable. It was really a missionary course that was meant to prepare students who would change the health-care system." She cites with gratification a long list of former students who have done just that. "Certainly what I find most rewarding is that my students have done so well."

"It was really a missionary course that was meant to prepare students who would change the health-care system."

-Professor Regina E. Herzlinger

Professor Herzlinger also served as contributor and editor of Consumer-Driven Health Care: Implications for Providers, Payers, and Policymakers, an 892-page critique of worldwide health-care systems that charge exorbitant prices, provide inadequate and fragmented care, abuse the consumer, and disenchant doctors. The book includes some 200 pages of Herzlinger's own writing. What's the problem? "Health-care systems worldwide are guided by someone other than the consumer," namely bureaucrats, insurers, and technocrats. She offers a solution: Put consumers in the driver's seat. Herzlinger, who has been advocating consumer power in health care since 1979, believes the time is ripe for the revolution. "This is a mission book, meant to legitimize the concept of consumer-driven health care, making it more than an ideological twinkle in someone's eye but a real concept."

In recognition of her outstanding contributions and her influential research in health care, Herzlinger was the 2004 recipient of the Healthcare Financial Management Association's distinguished Board of Directors' Award. She accepted the award in June during the association's Annual National Institute in Nashville. "The industry is a better, more dynamic place because of thought leaders like Professor Herzlinger," said HFMA president and CEO Richard L. Clarke. Herzlinger adds, "I was very honored to receive this award."