We are delighted to launch the Issue 6.1 of HMPI. The articles feature a mini special issue on bundled care, together with an exciting set of discussions of current challenges in heath and healthcare.
Four papers highlight opportunities and challenges in bundled care. Lauren Bell and Jiayan Chen describe a bundled care initiative led by a shared service organization in Ontario Canada that is beginning to make a difference in the quality and cost of services such as hip and knee replacements. Vivian Lee points to emerging opportunities in U.S. healthcare to pay for results, not action. Brian Golden and Rosemary Hannam report on a failed attempt to implement bundled care in an environment that would seem to be particularly suited to this strategy, the Canadian province of Ontario. Jiayin Xue and Kevin Schulman describe the history of Medicare Advantage Medicare and the ways in which it operates through capitated payment models.
Three papers in this issue address issues with relevance for dealing with pandemics. Blair Gifford provides a history of how voluntary hospitals in Chicago responded quickly to the influenza epidemic of 1918, which has implications for how facilities with a community service orientation are now responding to COVID. Hoyt Gong and Cecilia Wang describe how China’s emergency response system at the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in the country left unintended fallout on non-COVID-19 patients. Steven Ullmann and Richard Westlund describe insights that emerged from the annual conference of the University of Miami Center for Health Management and Policy, including challenges of access to COVID-related services that arise from social determinants of health.
Two papers highlight issues at the forefront of health care initiatives in the U.S. and globally. Mark Pauly and Koushal Rao investigate incentives for sellers to provide transparent information about healthcare prices. Kristan Staudenmayer, Courtenay Steward, Clare Purvis, and Kevin Schulman highlight governance structures that limit innovation in digital health care.
Finally, Regi’s Case Corner describes a new case about Google’s Verily Life Sciences and its initiative to harness machine learning for healthcare.
Health systems around the world face a hugely challenging dual set of challenges. They are under extreme stress as they deal with the COVID pandemic. At the same time, the health systems face the parallel need to continue to provide their traditional services, independent of COVID. The research and perspectives from our authors provide ideas that will help health system leaders walk this balance of pandemic and traditional services.
As always, the authors of the articles that we publish in HMPI are committed to improving management practices in health systems around the world. We welcome your comments about the ideas that the articles spark and your ideas for subsequent articles. Please send us your comments to info@hmpi.org. We also welcome discussion on the BAHM Forum on LinkedIn, the BAHM LinkedIn page and on Twitter .
If you have an idea that you would like to explore for HMPI, please send an outline of your article to our editorial team at info@hmpi.org.
Will Mitchell
Professor of Strategic Management
Anthony S. Fell Chair in New Technologies and Commercialization
Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto