Health Care Innovation (HCIN)
HCIN 6000 The American Health Care System
The American health care system is a product of its history and of policy decisions made in doctors' offices, boardrooms, and congressional committee chambers over many decades—and presents opportunities for innovation. This course examines the structure and economics of health care financing and delivery in the United States, including private health insurance, Medicare, pharmaceuticals, and behavioral health; surveys the present structure of the American health care system and the history of efforts to reform health care at the federal level; and evaluates efforts to reform payment, expand access, and improve the quality of health care services. Lectures and interviews by active experts address successful policy change in health care, being a policy advocate, and proposing innovations to address needs within the health care system. You will draft a policy memo that analyzes an exigent challenge and recommends a policy innovation to inform and persuade a decision-maker of your choice.
Fall
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6010 Health Care Operations
The word "operations" derives from the Latin "opus," and opus means work. So by definition, operations is about work. This course offers an introduction to operations management. After completing the course, you will be able to use a systematic approach to analyze and improve your work in health care settings. The course includes an examination of inefficiencies resulting from the three system inhibitors: waste, variability, and inflexibility. And it provides strategies for engaging in the ongoing process of reducing these negative impacts without sacrificing quality of care. Major units also cover health care delivery processes, lean ops, agility, and managing the service organization. You will practice identifying key performance indicators in health care systems, forecasting demand, predicting utilization and variability, determining staffing levels, and recommending process improvements and innovations to improve client satisfaction.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6012 Connected Health Care
Connected strategies have the potential to radically transform health care business models. By designing connected relationships and architectures, and developing digital and analog networks, we may be able to improve quality of care while also making efficient use of resources. These strategies can enhance existing organizations and foster disruptive innovation. In this course you will practice building connected customer relationships, designing connection architectures, understanding new revenue models, and creating the infrastructure of connection. You will design a connected strategy for your organization or service and develop frameworks to build upon in future endeavors.
Mutually Exclusive: HCIN 6100
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6013 Addressing Challenges
Throughout the Addressing Challenges lab, you will collaborate closely with a group of classmates to investigate a problem space: access to high-quality health care. Together, you will define a problem that lends itself to generating impactful and innovative solutions. After learning the fundamentals of human-centered design thinking, your team will conduct background research with end users, analyze your findings, and define a problem. In the final week your team will present your problem statement to a panel of health care experts for constructive feedback.
Summer Term
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6020A Behavioral Economics and Decision Making
Behavioral economics leverages insights from psychology to enhance our understanding of economics. It stemmed from a series of observations that the standard economic view of people as “rational expected utility maximizers” does not hold true in a number of contexts. This two-part course offers an introduction to behavioral economics and its applications in health, health care, and health policy. We will examine the foundations of the field, then consider 1) the structure of choice environments and how people are influenced by how choices are framed, 2) strategies for supercharging incentive programs, 3) the use of social incentives and social comparisons to achieve better physician performance, 4) approaches to implementing behavioral interventions in business and academic settings, and 5) the ethics of behavioral economics and the question of when a “nudge” becomes a shove. You will practice applying principles to real-world cases and draft a funding proposal for an intervention of your design. This is a multi-term course. To earn course credit, students must successfully complete both HCIN6020A in the Fall and HCIN6020B in the Spring. Students who complete both parts will receive a single grade and earn 1 CU total.
Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete
0.5 Course Units
HCIN 6020B Behavioral Economics and Decision Making
This course is a continuation of HCIN6020A, Behavioral Economics and Decision Making. In the final weeks of the course, you will focus on structuring and implementing incentive programs, utilizing social forces to shape behavior, and applying behavioral economics to implementation science. As a final project, you will design a behavioral intervention plan, with a funding request, to address poor health metrics. Students must successfully complete HCIN 6020A in the Fall term before taking this course. Students will receive a single letter grade and earn 1 CU total for HCIN 6020A and 6020B.
Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete
Prerequisite: HCIN 6020A
0.5 Course Units
HCIN 6022 Digital Health
This course is designed for graduate students and professionals to gain an understanding of the digital health landscape so you might effectively leverage technology for innovation, with consideration of patient-centered care, equity, and ethical issues. You will explore a range of health care settings, health care data types, the role of patients as sources of data and recipients of information, the role of humans in-the-loop of AI, and the security, privacy, and confidentiality concerns of digital health approaches. We will discuss emerging systems and enabling technologies outside of the hospital: what they can do, what they are unable to do, and which of them have the potential to revolutionize the way we deliver care from birth to old age. You will apply these lessons to design an experimental prototype and draft a plan for a digital health solution.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6023 Designing Innovation
Throughout the Master of Health Care Innovation, you have learned innovation and leadership skills and techniques that will help you transform health care for the better. This 9-week lab offers you a safe space to practice and hone those skills with the goal of generating positive change in future projects. To start, you will choose a project that matches the needs of your professional setting with your skills and strengths, within the context of what is doable in a limited scope and timeframe. You will take stock of your strengths and the resources at your disposal; practice key innovation techniques including contextual inquiry, problem definition, and creative divergence; right-size your project; and refine your rhetorical skills to construct persuasive pitches calibrated to various audiences of stakeholders and decision makers. You may come away with a project you wish to pursue further in your professional setting. However, the most important outcome of this lab will be the experience you gain from immersing yourself in the innovation and design process.
Spring
Mutually Exclusive: HCIN 6190
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6032 Value and Quality in Health Care
This course examines the innovation lifecycle for health care delivery from the perspectives of health care business operations, regulation, and quality measurement. The first half of the course focuses on the connection between quality and value. You will learn methods to analyze problem spaces to understand how they might produce value, and for whom. The second half examines techniques for getting to a pilot and for scaling and sustaining new products and services. You will learn how leaders in industry and government evaluate health care innovations. You will hear cases that highlight the real-world experience of innovators at every step in the process. In a group-based project, you will take on the role of internal innovation consultants and conduct stakeholder interviews with AI-driven characters to take an idea from concept to pilot. You will come away with a portfolio of consulting materials, as well as a pitch to stakeholders.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6042 Health Economics
This course surveys health economics through its principles, insurance, physicians, hospitals and related care, and regulation and integration. Dynamic lectures cover the role of economics in health; differences between health economics and other branches of the discipline; supply, demand, and equilibrium; and the iron triangle of health care (access, cost, and quality). Key health insurance concepts are introduced—risk aversion, moral hazard, cost sharing, and adverse selection—along with a practical overview of the calculations that underlie pricing decisions. You will learn about the relationship between physicians and patients, supplier-induced demand, alternative payment models, the economics of primary care and of specialization, and the role of nonprofit and for-profit hospitals in the health care system. The course concludes with the legal and regulatory structures that govern hospital systems and hospitals’ regional market power, by examining vertical and horizontal integration, price discrimination, price fixing, mergers, and antitrust laws. In the final assignment, you will apply course concepts to health equity issues.
Spring
Mutually Exclusive: HCIN 6040
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6052 Leadership & Legal Issues in Health Care
This course surveys the leadership skills and legal knowledge necessary to navigate the complexities of the health care industry at the highest levels. The first unit explores concepts, experience, and skills analysis necessary to develop a personal leadership checklist and an organizational leadership strategy. The second half surveys the legal regimes that govern medical care in the United States, including the types of health law formation (cases, statutes, administrative regulations) and the multiple federal, state, and local institutions involved in the creation and application of the law. You will apply course lessons through a case study, in which you place yourself in the shoes of a health system leader during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Assignments also cover drafting leadership guides, leading in a crisis, communicating persuasively, confidentiality and malpractice, and rationing care.
Spring
Mutually Exclusive: HCIN 6120
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6062 Using Data for Transformation
Whether we are using AI to diagnose lung cancer or machine learning to predict hospitalization risk, algorithms are transforming medicine and health care. Most algorithms are based on routinely collected health care data. But too often algorithms are deployed without understanding what we are trying to predict and where the data are coming from. Through lectures, case studies, and interviews with leaders from across the health care ecosystem, we will discuss how to turn routine health care data into an algorithm, how to evaluate the validity of AI products, and how to understand liability and policy implications around algorithms in health care. This course will help you understand how to use data to transform care delivery and work with technical experts to design or select approaches that are right for your needs.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6070 Translating Ideas into Outcomes
In this course, you will apply state-of-the-art innovation methodologies to improve health care for patients, clinicians, and organizations. Rooted in design thinking and human-centered design, this course guides you through the development of innovation projects from idea generation, through problem definition, testing, and preparing for delivery. You will identify unexamined assumptions about your professional environment to gain practice in defining strategies for solving health care problems. These strategies include 1) engaging in contextual inquiry to reveal what others have missed, 2) reframing problems to enable the development of high-impact solutions, 3) practicing intentional divergence to challenge initial, unproductive concepts, and 4) testing hypotheses to generate data quickly and at low cost. The goal of this course is to provide you with tools to develop innovative solutions to pressing health care problems, and to produce the types of early data that enable organizations to support, promote, and ultimately adopt those solutions at scale. Assignments help you practice each step, including drafting a plan for an innovation project and creating a short pitch for a spontaneous meeting with your supervisor.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6160 Advancing Health Equity
Against a backdrop of growing evidence of effective practices, this course explores areas of note and openings for innovation to advance health equity. Throughout the course, we survey the context of health disparities and health equity—a definition of terms, the state of the evidence, and relevant historical background. We explore evidence-based frameworks, tools, and techniques that promote equitable and sustainable implementation of new initiatives. And we reflect on personal and relational skills including learning to see inequity, mapping its sources within existing power structures, and changing perceptions of what types of innovation are feasible for ourselves and our institutions. Throughout this course, you will be asked to catalogue and analyze opportunities to advance equity in health and health care, and you will come away with a plan for an initiative that can be implemented in your professional context.
Summer Term
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6170 Leading Change in Health Care
There has been no shortage of recommendations from executives, consultants, and self-declared experts on how to improve health care. Yet health care systems still struggle with problems of cost, quality, and access—exacerbated by high employee turnover and provider burnout. Across the country, however, we have seen successes with innovative practices related to care coordination and standardization, the expansion of community health and palliative care, and new models of behavioral health. Through lectures, conversations with health care leaders, and your own investigation, we will explore the elements that have facilitated those successes. Topics include 1) leading innovation and organizational transformation, 2) facilitating a culture of inclusivity and engagement, 3) leveraging data, 4) aligning incentives, and 5) implementing transformation. You will gain insights into why efforts at organizational transformation succeed and learn techniques to apply these insights at every level of an organization. You will come away with a set of strategies for implementing innovation and transformation in your professional setting.
1 Course Unit