Field Course: Transforming Health Care Delivery
Course Number 6215
Paper/Project
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 and the successful adoption of transformative technologies such as digital tools and personalized diagnosis and treatment. This, in turn, will involve fundamentally different approaches to care delivery, the development of new technologies, a rethinking of incentives for stakeholders in the health care system, and a fundamental shift in the roles played by individuals and organizations throughout the 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.
Prerequisite
In order to enroll in the Q4 field course, students must have participated in the Q3 case-based course.
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 the approaches presented in the Q3 course including 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. The Q4 course will provide students with hands-on experience in working on health care delivery innovation and improvement projects with Boston-area hospitals.
Course Faculty and Format
The course will be taught by Professor Ariel Stern. Professor Stern is the Poronui Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. She studies topics related to the drivers of innovation among health care organizations, firms, and policy makers as well as the determinants underpinning how new medical technologies are adopted and used in practice. She is a faculty affiliate of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard-MIT Center for Regulatory Science. She has served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the German Federal Ministry of Health, and currently advises several private health care companies.
THCD has two components, of which this is the first (Q3):
- A 1.5-credit case-based course covering Q3
- A 1.5-credit field course covering Q4
THCD consists of two halves: a case-based course which can be taken as a stand-alone course in Q3 and a field course built around strategic projects with local Boston-area hospitals that can be taken in Q4. The Q3 class can be taken alone, but the Q4 class will have Q3 as a prerequisite, so a student can either take the class as a full-semester course (Q3 + Q4) or during Q3 only. Project partners will include hospitals and other health care delivery organizations. Projects will be sourced for students by the faculty with students allocated to projects and teams based on preferences submitted early in the semester.
Typically, students in THCD have formed a close-knit community to support each other's interests in learning more about the health care industry. To that end, Professor Stern will host optional, small-group "coffee chats" about current topics in health care.
Course Content and Organization
The Q4 course is field-based and will involve 2-3 in-class sessions in April for final project presentations, but will not involve any additional case discussions.
In Q4 students will be evaluated on the basis of their team project presentations and associated deliverables (slides and a brief individual write-up) and will be expected to attend 2-3 in-class sessions during the month of April.
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