Delivering value in a health care system is a focus of Professor Michael Porter’s work in the Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness at HBS. He advocates that the goal of any health care system should be to increase the value it delivers to patients. This is the underlying thesis of Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results, the influential book by Porter and Elizabeth Teisberg.

Competition and the Intersection of Industry and Policy is at the heart of Professor Leemore Dafny’s research which examines competitive interactions among payers and providers of health care services. Her current projects include studies of consolidation in care delivery settings, products and pricing on the public health insurance exchanges, and co-payment coupons for prescription drugs.

There are substantial opportunities to enhance efficiency and quality, and serious fiscal challenges ahead if spending growth is not permanently curtailed. This course will introduce participants to the key strategic problems facing healthcare organizations, and will illustrate how strategic principles can be applied in healthcare settings to identify sources of competitive advantage (and, more commonly, disadvantage).

Improving value is the only solution to the global health care challenge. Bringing together top management and senior physician leaders from global health care organizations, this program examines new strategies, organizational models, and measurement approaches to drive value improvement in health care delivery.