Faculty & Research
Regina E. Herzlinger

Regina E. Herzlinger

Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration

Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration

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Regina E. Herzlinger
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Featured Work Publications Research Summary Awards & Honors

Regina Herzlinger has been named the "Godmother of consumer-driven health care," because of her groundbreaking scholarly articles and books on this subject. She differed from conventional views of health care consumers, who were derogatorily described as non–compliant or patients. Instead, she portrayed them as busy people who are eager and capable of participating in managing their health, with appropriate, relevant, and respectful support.

Prof. Herzlinger named the consumer-driven health care movement.  Her focus has supported the explosion of remote medical centers, wearables, implantable sensors, telehealth, urgent and emergent free-standing care facilities, and the intense interest in health savings and health reimbursement accounts. She anticipates future consumer-driven health plans and delivery systems focused on specific chronic diseases and disabilities.

She is also a teacher and scholar of innovation in health care. She highlights changes in insurance, focused health care delivery and insurance, medical technology, and transparency. Regi has taught thousands of Harvard students that only innovators can serve the ever-changing needs of health care consumers and how to make innovation happen through her popular HBS courses and HarvardX MOOC, Innovating in Health Care. Many of her students founded billion-dollar innovations and prominent non-profit firms and became leaders in major health corporations. Her forthcoming book Innovating in Healthcare (Wiley, 2020), contains the lessons of her courses.

She has been active in U.S. health care public policy. For example, her Wall Street Journal editorial "The IRS Can Save American Health Care," influenced an Executive Order: Promoting Healthcare Choice and Competition across the United States, finalized June 2019, and a Wall Street Journal editorial in October 2018 by three U.S. cabinet secretaries that cited her, "New Health Options for Small-Business Employees." Her 2020 Health Affairs article couples Biden/Trump proposals to create a bipartisan, cost–controlling solution to increasing coverage without raising taxes.

Prof. Herzlinger is also a successful medical technology entrepreneur with her husband, a Ph.D. Physicist. Their devices, which they design and manufacture in the U.S., have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. They are working on new ideas and have formed a charity to promulgate education in healthcare innovation.

Regina E. Herzlinger is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. She was the first woman to be tenured and chaired at Harvard Business School and serve on many established and start-up corporate health care/medical technology boards. She initiated the courses in non-profit and health care at HBS and was the first faculty member to be selected by the students as their best instructor. Her books include Best Sellers: Who Killed Health Care; Consumer-Driven Health Care; Market-Driven Health Care, and the anticipated December 2020 release Innovating in Healthcare: Creating Breakthrough Services, Products, and Business Models (Wiley).

Featured Work
Benchmarks for Confronting the Challenges for Innovation in Health Care with a Modern Curriculum

In this white paper, based on a 2012 conference on health-care management education, you will hear diverse and sometimes discordant voices from all corners of health care management. Despite the range of opinions and many perspectives offered, all are motivated by real concern for the global state of health care and the imperative for change. The paper includes detailed recommendations for curricular content, pedagogical tools, professional values, and faculty career paths. If any group of scholars should believe in its ability to effect sweeping change, it is those of us in health care....

Big Think Interview with Regina Herzlinger

How can we reduce health care costs? In what way should health care be focused on outcomes? How should health insurance be reformed? What are some recent technological advances in health care? What are the benefits of the retail medical movement?

Who Killed Health Care? America's $2 Trillion Medical Problem - and the Consumer-Driven Cure
by Regina Herzlinger, May 2007

In the battle for U.S. health care, patients and doctors are losing.
One of the nation's most respected health care analysts, Regina Herzlinger exposes the motives and methods of those who have crippled America's health care system-figures in the insurance, hospital, employment, governmental, and academic sectors. She proves how our current system, which is organized around payers and providers rather than the needs of its users, is dangerously eroding patient welfare and is pushing costs out of the reach of millions.

Books
Journal Articles
Book Chapters
  • Herzlinger, Regina E. "Consumer-Driven Health Care: Conquering Health Care Cost and Quality Demons." In Accountability and Responsibility in Health Care: Issues in Addressing an Emerging Global Challenge. Vol. 1, edited by Bruce Rosen, Avi Israeli, and Stephen Shortell. World Scientific Series in Global Healthcare Economics and Public Policy. World Scientific, 2012. View Details
  • Herzlinger, Regina E. "Consumer-Driven Universal Health Care is the Best Solution." In Current Controversies: Health Care, edited by Noel Merino. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2010. View Details
  • Herzlinger, R. E. "Consumer-Driven Healthcare: Transforming the Delivery of Health Services." In Futurescan: Healthcare Trends and Implications, 2006 2011, 13–20. Health Administration Press, 2006. View Details
  • Herzlinger, R. E. "Can Public Trust in Nonprofits and Governments Be Restored?" In Harvard Business Review on Nonprofits. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999. View Details
  • Herzlinger, R. E. "Effective Oversight: A Guide for Nonprofit Directors?" In Harvard Business Review on Nonprofits, 27–52. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999. View Details
  • Herzlinger, Regina E. "Culture Is the Key." In Leading Beyond the Walls, edited by F. Hesselbein, M. Goldsmith, and I. Somerville. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1999. View Details
  • Herzlinger, Regina E. "Effective Oversight: A Guide for Nonprofit Directors." In Fachzeitschrift fur Nonprofit Management, edited by Michael Muller and Franziska Hiltpold. Fribourg: Verbandsmanagement Institut, 1998. View Details
  • Herzlinger, Regina E. "Effective Oversight: A Guide for Nonprofit Directors." In Nonprofit Governance: The Executive's Guide, edited by V. Futter and G. Overton, 13–24. Chicago: American Bar Association, 1997. View Details
Cases and Teaching Materials
Presentations
Other Publications and Materials
  • Herzlinger, Regina E. "Digital Health Care: Empowering Consumers." Harvard Business School Alumni Webinar, December 1, 2020. View Details
  • Herzlinger, Regina E. "Benchmarks For Confronting The Challenges For Innovation In Health Care With A Modern Curriculum: 21st-Century Health Care Management Education: Confronting Challenges for Innovation with a Modern Curriculum." White Paper Series, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, January 2013. View Details
  • Herzlinger, R. E. "Consumer-Driven Health Care: Lessons from Switzerland." View Details
Research Summary
Overview
Winner of the Harvard Business School outstanding teacher award and research awards from U.S. and international health care and accounting organizations: 2016 “60 of the Most Powerful People in Healthcare in 2016,” Becker’s Hospital Review, January 3, 2017 ; 2014 Alumni Achievement Award; Academy of Healthcare Executives Research Award (three times); 2008 U.S. Chamber of Commerce – Who Killed Health Care? – Books that Changed the Debate; 2008 Fellow of American College of Physician Executives; 2004 Healthcare Financial Management Association’s Board of Directors Award recipient; named by Managed Healthcare as one of the top ten thinkers; honored as the Consumers for Health Care Choices Pioneer in Health Economics.
Consumer-Driven Health Care
Since 1999, Professor Herzlinger's work in this area has provided the major impetus for the transformation of the health care sector: first in new consumer-driven insurance products sold by established insurers such as Aetna, United and CIGNA, as well as entrepreneurial firms; and, second, in the appearance of health care focused factories. She has authored a major new book, Who Killed Health Care? (McGraw-Hill, 2007); the best-selling Market-Driven Health Care and Consumer-Driven Health Care; major journal articles; a Harvard Business School Publishing video; and a number of Wall Street Journal articles and Marketplace (NPR) editorials. Professor Herzlinger is widely quoted and interviewed on the subject.
Innovating in Health Care
Since 2001, Professor Herzlinger has written over 50 new cases and notes for this second-year MBA course on the following subjects: insurance; providers; pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, and biotechnology; medical devices sector; and health care information. She is completing the Instructors Guide for 2011 publication.
Nature of Organizations

Why do non-profit, public, and private business organizations exist? This project, begun in 2005, will became a seminar in 2007, focusing on the unique missions of these organizational forms and the resulting mechanisms for effective oversight.

Awards & Honors
Winner of the 2020–21 Bugbee-Falk Book Award from the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) for Innovating in Health Care (Wiley, forthcoming).
Named one of the 60 Most Powerful People in Healthcare by Becker’s Hospital Review in 2017.
Recognized as an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives in 2017.
Named one of Healthcare Management International's "100 Most Influential People in Healthcare--World Edition" in the Education category in 2017.
Received the 2014 Beatrice D. Ellerin Award from the HBS Health Industry Alumni. The prestigious and competitive Ellerin award recognizes an outstanding leader in the health care industry who has made a significant contribution to shaping her or his field.
Named one of the 40 Smartest People in Healthcare by Becker’s Hospital Review in 2014.
Awarded honorary membership in the American College of Physician Executives in 2008 in recognition of her many contributions to the advancement of medical management.
Winner of the 2007 Pioneer in Health Economics Award from Consumers for Health Care Choices.
Winner of the 2000 Articles of Merit Competition of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) Financial and Management Accounting Committee for "The Outsiders" (Management Accounting, June 2000).
Winner of the 1998 James A. Hamilton Book of the Year Award presented by American College of Healthcare Executives for Market-Driven Health Care (Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. Inc., 1996).
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