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Healthcare

Going the Last Mile (with Evidence)

A study by Yale’s Mushfiq Mobarak and his colleagues found that nurses on motorbikes with vaccine-stocked coolers could help increase vaccination rates in rural Sierra Leone, showing that it is possible to get health interventions to the most remote and under-resourced areas cost-effectively, in ways that help ensure that the interventions are taken up and used.

A motorcycle carrying vaccine supplies along a dirt road
  • Can an international perspective help create a value-based health system?

    International comparative healthcare is a largely untapped field. Health policy researcher Jennifer Baron '05, describes programs that suggest steps toward aligning incentives for all participants around value judged on health results. Even looking at countries that provide near-universal access to care, she finds that a comprehensive value-based system doesn’t yet exist.

  • Does our health system deliver value?

    Competitive strategy expert Michael Porter, the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School, has shaken up the thinking around healthcare reform with Redefining Health Care, a book he coauthored with Elizabeth Teisberg, associate professor at the Darden School of Business. Porter talked with Q3 about his ideas on how to bring the right kind of competition to healthcare and developments since the 2006 release of his book.

  • What do the numbers really mean?

    The healthcare debate often turns on numbers, but statistics are easy to distort or misunderstand.

  • How can technological innovation help healthcare?

    A recurring theme in discussions of how to improve the U.S. healthcare system is the hope that technological innovation will provoke leaps in the quality and efficiency of care. Thomas Enders is a managing director for the $1.2 billion Global Health Solutions group of CSC. He provides an insider's perspective on what technological change can accomplish.

  • Can empathy help healthcare and business?

    Organizational change can occur at the level of technological innovation or at the level of human interaction. Consulting firm Katzenbach Partners studied customer service across industries and developed a model that proposes creating competitive advantage through a holistic approach to customer service. A recent white paper, “The Empathy Engine: Achieving Breakthroughs in Patient Service,” applies this analysis to the healthcare industry. Q3 talked with Jenny Machida, a leader in Katzenbach Partners’ healthcare practice and one of the authors of the paper, about the personal side of patient service.

  • Does universal healthcare make everyone's life better?

    Kathy Lavidge argues that access to healthcare affects aspects of life far beyond the medical.

  • How do healthcare consumers make decisions?

    Like consumers of other goods and services, healthcare consumers don’t always make decisions that are in their own best interests. Four experts — a psychologist, an organizational behaviorist, a behavioral economist, and a clinician — discuss the challenges of helping people make healthy choices.

  • Can good health be good business?

    Business and health could be said to coexist uneasily; many see the quest to increase profits and control costs as antithetical to quality care. But business is also a driver of innovation and efficiency in healthcare. Four leaders of healthcare organizations discuss the challenges in trying to deliver both good business and good health.

  • How can we fund innovation?

    In searching for opportunities to invest in healthcare, venture capitalists must consider not only which new technologies and ideas are likely to develop into successful businesses, but which are poised to transform medicine — and which can make a difference in people’s lives.

  • What is the return on a life saved?

    Ed Kaplan and David Paltiel have known each other for 20 years, sometimes collaborating on research projects or coauthoring papers. They argue that when the tools of a business education are applied to the problems of healthcare, such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the result can be better decisions about how to use scarce resources.