At the root of the transformation occurring in the health care industry—both in the United States and internationally—is the fundamental challenge of improving clinical outcomes while controlling costs. Addressing this challenge will require dramatic improvements in the processes by which care is delivered to patients. This, in turn, will involve fundamentally different approaches to care delivery, the development of novel therapies, a rethinking of incentives, and a fundamental shift in the roles played by individuals and organizations throughout the health care sector. While the current COVID-19 pandemic has created a sense of urgency around many of these topics, they will remain salient issues as the health care system settles into its "new normal" mode of operation. This course will equip students with strategies and tools to help navigate the ever-changing landscape of the health care industry.

Career Focus

This course is appropriate for students interested in understanding the fundamental improvement challenges facing the health care sector and developing strategies for addressing them. Students may have career interests in organizations that provide health care (e.g., hospitals, medical groups, retail clinics) or in firms that partner with, supply, consult to, or invest in such organizations (e.g., payers, biopharmaceutical and device companies, health information technology, venture capital and private equity).

Educational Objectives

This course will help students develop the managerial skills required to identify and implement transformational change. It will draw upon a range of approaches for improving value in healthcare delivery, including continuous improvement, organizational redesign, population health management, precision medicine, patient engagement, digital health, payment reform, and the creation of appropriate incentives for innovation. For each of these approaches, the course will emphasize the importance of identifying improvement opportunities, implementing relevant changes, and measuring their effects on performance.

Course Faculty and Format

The course will be co-taught by Professors Amitabh Chandra and Robert Huckman.

Professor Chandra is the Henry and Allison McCance Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where he directs the MS/MBA joint-degree program in the life-sciences, and the Ethel Zimmerman Wiener Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He serves on the advisory boards of a number of private health care companies and has been a consultant to several public companies.

Professor Huckman is Albert J. Weatherhead III Professor of Business Administration, the Faculty Chair of the HBS Health Care Initiative, and the Unit Head for Technology and Operations Management. He studies topics related to performance improvement, digital innovation, and consumer engagement in health care. He is the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Brigham and Women's Physicians Organization serves as an advisor to several private health care companies.

The primary, though not exclusive, teaching approach in the course will be case discussions using Zoom. Professors Chandra and Huckman will alternate as the primary faculty for each session, with both of them engaged in all class discussions.

Typically, students in THCD have formed a close-knit community to support each other's interests in learning more about the health care industry. We expect this year to be even more active in this regard. To that end, Professors Chandra and Huckman will host optional, small-group "coffee chats" about current topics in health care. They also will help connect students with HBS alumni and other health care experts who can provide insight and advice related to course projects.

Course Content and Organization

The course will be organized into four modules:

1. Designing for Value:  This module will present the basic components of the value-based health care framework, including the integration of care delivery around specific medical conditions, cost and outcome measurement, payment reform, disparities in access, and the management of population health.
2. Implementing Improvement: This module will consider the key challenges associated with implementing value improvement within the constraints of the current delivery system, including the appropriate use of standardization, the integration of new delivery approaches into existing organizations, and the adoption of information technology. 
3. Rethinking Care Delivery:  This module will consider the benefits and limitations of nascent efforts to improve value in health care through more fundamental changes to the process of care delivery, such as primary care innovation, retail clinic models, and digital health.
4. From Care to Cure? Inducing Transformational Innovation: This module will examine the development of new therapies that could shift the focus of health care toward preventing or curing illness rather than treating it.  It will address topics related to pricing, precision medicine, and approaches for inducing innovation.

Students will be evaluated on the basis of class participation, a blog post, and a final project that involves developing a short case (and teaching note) that applies course themes to a specific organization. These projects will be completed in teams of 2-3 students.  Teams will be able to select their own organizations to study and will receive further guidance from Professors Chandra and Huckman early in the semester.