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 the various components of health care financing and delivery in the United States, including private health insurance, Medicare, telehealth, 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.
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, students will be able to use a systematic approach to analyze and improve their 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. Students 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
Technology has allowed firms to fundamentally change how they connect with their customers. Rather than having occasional, episodic interactions — where customers realize they have an unmet need, then look for ways to fill it — firms are striving to be continuously connected to their customers, providing services and products as the needs arise, even before customers become aware of them. There is probably no other industry for which this development will be as transformative as in health care delivery. Wearable devices, smart pill bottles, digestible sensors, and many other technologies are associated with the promise of improving the quality of care while also making efficient use of resources. This course explores the impact of connected strategies in general, and the opportunities associated with them in health care delivery.
Mutually Exclusive: HCIN 6100
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6013A Addressing Challenges
In this 6-week lab, students will use the skills they have learned in their MHCI coursework to investigate, specify, and address an exigent challenge in health care. Students will collaborate in groups to offer mutual support, exchange feedback, and build a strong knowledge base, including: · Background knowledge about their challenge. · Stakeholder profiles. · Areas with potential to make a meaningful impact. · Analogues for solutions both in and out of health care. Then, based on this foundation, students will produce a suite of deliverables calibrated to inform decision makers and persuade them to adopt their approach. At the end of this lab, students will come away with a suite of work-relevant materials, including a 1-pager and a second deliverable tailored to their professional setting. This is the first part of the multi-term course, Addressing Challenges. Students will receive a single letter grade and earn 1 cu total for HCIN 6013A and 6013B.
Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete
0.5 Course Units
HCIN 6013B Addressing Challenges
This is the second and final part of the multi-term lab, Addressing Challenages. Students must successfully complete HCIN 6031A in the Summer term before taking this course. Students will receive a single letter grade and earn 1 cu total for HCIN 6013A and 6013B. In this 6-week lab, students will use the skills they have learned in their MHCI coursework to investigate, specify, and address an exigent challenge in health care. Students will collaborate in groups to offer mutual support, exchange feedback, and build a strong knowledge base, including: · Background knowledge about their challenge. · Stakeholder profiles. · Areas with potential to make a meaningful impact. · Analogues for solutions both in and out of health care. Then, based on this foundation, students will produce a suite of deliverables calibrated to inform decision makers and persuade them to adopt their approach. At the end of this lab, students will come away with a suite of work-relevant materials, including a 1-pager and a second deliverable tailored to their professional setting.
Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete
Prerequisite: HCIN 6103A
0.5 Course Units
HCIN 6020A Behavioral Economics and Decision Making
Behavioral economics is a relatively new field at the intersection of economics and psychology that builds on the observation that people tend to make predictably irrational decisions, and that those patterns can be used to shape personally and socially beneficial behaviors. This course offers an introduction to behavioral economics and its applications in health and health care. We will examine the underpinnings of the field, then consider: • The structure of choice environments and how people are influenced by how choices are framed. • Strategies for supercharging incentive programs. • The use of social incentives and social comparisons to achieve better physician performance. The course will conclude with an exploration of how behavioral economics can be used to shape health policy, and the important question of when a “nudge” becomes a shove. 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, students will focus on structuring incentive programs, utilizing social forces to shape behavior, and the role of behavioral economics in public policy. Students must successfully complete HCIN6020A in the Fall term before taking this course. Students will receive a single letter grade and earn 1 CU total for HCIN6020A 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 professionals and graduate students to gain an understanding of the digital health landscape so they might effectively leverage technology for innovation, with consideration of patient-centered care, equity, and ethical issues. Students 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. There will be discussions of emerging systems still in their infancy, 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.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6032 Value and Quality in Health Care
Innovations in health care have the potential to achieve efficiency, reduce health care costs, and ensure high-quality patient outcomes. But to achieve these goals, we must determine and adopt standards for health care quality and safety. Through lectures, interviews with national leaders, case studies, and hands-on practice, this course introduces students to quality and measurement tools that make visible the most pressing areas of opportunity for health care innovation. Students will explore how perceptions of value are specific to stakeholder needs. And they will learn how quality improvement initiatives can be leveraged to drive value for stakeholders across the health care system.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6040 Health Economics
Health economics applies economic principles to the health care sector. By recognizing the importance of scarcity and incentives, it focuses on the critical economic issues in producing, delivering, and financing health care. It analyzes determinants of demand for medical care, the unique role of physicians in resource allocation, the role of health insurance, and competition in medical care markets.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6060 Applying Operations Management
Analyze 2 health care cases; through the process of forecasting, build a KPI tree; and recommend process improvements.
0.5 Course Units
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 – claims, electronic health records, and registry data. But too often algorithms are deployed without a full understanding of what we are trying to predict and where the data are coming from. Through a combination of 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 students gain a fuller understanding of how to use routine health care data to transform care delivery and work with technical experts to design or select approaches that are right for their needs.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6070 Translating Ideas into Outcomes
In this course, students 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 students through the development of innovation projects from idea generation, through problem definition, testing, and preparing for delivery. The course asks students to identify unexamined assumptions about their professional environment to gain proficiency in defining strategies for solving health care problems. These strategies include: · Engaging in contextual inquiry to reveal what others have missed. · Reframing problems to enable the development of high-impact solutions. · Practicing intentional divergence to challenge initial, unproductive concepts. · Testing hypotheses to generate data quickly and at low cost. · Designing experiences that catalyze the spread of desirable behaviors. The goal of this course is to provide students 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.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6080 Strategies for Health Insurance and Benefit Design & Driving Value in Health Care
This is a 6-week, 1 cu, online course that pairs two complementary course topics. In the first 3 weeks, you will study Health Insurance and Benefit Design with David Asch, MD, MBA and Kevin G. Volpp, MD, PhD. In the final 3 weeks, you will study Driving Value in Health Care with Lee Fleisher, MD. Strategies for Health Insurance and Benefit Design: Recent efforts to increase the amount of health produced through health insurance benefits relative to the cost have utilized a number of strategies. These have included high deductible health plans, price transparency, value-based insurance design, simplifying health plan designs, and providing incentives geared to influencing utilization. In this course, we will discuss some of the main challenges facing health insurers, efforts to reduce growth in entitlement spending, and research that uses on the effectiveness of different strategies to modify behavior through the use of incentives embedded within health insurance design. This course will emphasize both understanding and practical applications of this knowledge through a combination of lectures and interviews with expert practitioners. Following completion of this course, students will have a deeper understanding of some of the tradeoffs inherent in the approaches insurers are taking to provide greater value and health improvement for their beneficiaries. Paired with Driving Value in Health Care. We explore methods for analyzing value drivers and survey strategies to improve value (defined as quality over cost) in a health care system. Most policy experts agree that by focusing on value, we can align incentives for different groups within the health care system to address our most pressing problems. This course gives you the tools to do that by examining topics including the determinants of value, methodologies for understanding value drivers, and real-world examples of improving value through quality improvement. Through your work, you will identify gaps in quality, track inefficiencies in the patient experience, and ultimately build a persuasive presentation focused on reducing low-value care.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6100 Connected Health Care
Technology has allowed firms to fundamentally change how they connect with their customers. Rather than having occasional, episodic interactions--where customers realize they have an unmet need and then look for ways to fill it--firms are striving to be continuously connected to their customers, providing services and products as the needs arise, even before customers become aware of them. There is probably no other industry for which this development will be as transformative as in health care delivery. Wearable devices, smart pill bottles, and digestible sensors--all of these technologies, and many more, are associated with the promise of improving the quality of care while also making efficient use of resources. This course explores the impact of connected strategies in general, and in particular the opportunities associated with them in health care delivery.
Summer Term
Mutually Exclusive: HCIN 6012
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6110 Driving Value in the System
Engage in understanding the current goals of improving value--defined by quality over costs--in the health care system and drivers of improved value. Most policy experts agree that by focusing on value then we will be able to unite the different groups within the health care delivery system to help fix our current issues. Students who successfully complete this course will be able to discuss the payer drivers to increase value, measure quality, measure cost, deliver an elevator speech for resources to improve value, and select tools to implement a project to improve value.
0.5 Course Units
HCIN 6120 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 focuses on concepts, experience, and skills analysis necessary to develop and synthesize a personal and organizational leadership strategy. The second unit 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. Throughout, students will reflect on learning, test their knowledge with quizzes, and apply what they have learned to cases.
Summer Term
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6160 Advancing Health Equity
Against a backdrop of policy experimentation and growing evidence of effective practices, this course explores the work of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in health care organizations, clinical spaces, and affected communities. 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 examine opportunities and limitations of ADEI programs. We explore evidence-based frameworks and techniques that promote sustainable implementation of new initiatives. And we reflect on the personal and relational aspects of doing the work: learning to see inequity, interrogating our roles in existing power structures, and changing our perceptions of what types of change are feasible for ourselves and our institutions. Throughout this course, students will be asked to catalogue and analyze opportunities to advance equity in health and health care, and they will come away with a plan for an initiative that can be implemented in their 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. But the success rate for implementation has been low, and health care systems still struggle with problems of quality, cost, and access--not to mention high employee turnover and provider burnout. However, across the country, there have been pockets of success in improving care delivery. A number of best practices show promise, including open access scheduling, care coordination and standardization, performance measurement and feedback, the expansion of palliative care, community health worker programs, and the integration of behavioral care. Through lectures, case studies presented by multiple expert faculty, and interviews with leaders in the field, you will examine these transformative practices, and the leadership techniques that have led to their success. You will identify organizations that are primed for transformation, potential directions for leading transformation, and ways to direct change within your organization.
1 Course Unit
HCIN 6180 Building a Case for Transformation
This 4-week lab draws upon skills and techniques learned in Leading Change in Health Care (HCIN-6170) and throughout the MHCI program. Students will establish insights and connections that will allow them to scope and lead an innovation project within an organization. Students start with a project they have already begun to develop. They will: • Align the project with organizational needs, goals, and mission. • Establish the scope and limits of each phase of the project. • Define measures of success and key performance indicators, and determine how results will be communicated. • Investigate the project’s impact on stakeholders, and identify potential collaborators and champions. • Assess the project’s costs, benefits, and risks in its initial phase. • Develop a detailed project charter to serve as a guide for how to proceed. During the lab, students should expect to encounter some of the opportunities and challenges that surround the implementation of the project. The process will help them effectively position and execute the project within their organizations.
0.5 Course Units
HCIN 6190 Pitching Innovation
Students will use the skills and techniques learned in Translating Ideas into Outcomes (HCIN-6070) to construct a plan for an innovation project that addresses an exigent issue in their professional settings. To do this, they will: 1) reframe a problem to solve for specific metrics, 2) investigate potential solutions, and 3) develop a hypothesis that will become the kernel of a project. Then, based on that approach, they will create a portfolio of materials designed to build support for the project among colleagues and decision makers in their organizations. At the end of this lab students will come away with a clear plan for an innovation project, as well as a set of persuasive tools that includes an elevator pitch, 1-pager, pitch deck, and presentation.
0.5 Course Units