This issue begins our transition to a new editorial team. We are still in shock over the sudden loss of Will Mitchell, our Editor in Chief, in December. Will was a friend, colleague for over 20 years, and an energetic supporter of management education and tools in health care. We have complied comments from Will’s friends, colleagues, and students in this issue to help us all understand his broad impact on the field and his amazing attributes as a person. He will be sorely missed.
This is an exciting issue, one that combines health care business and policy in new ways. As the global COVID-19 pandemic marks a second year, we examine key issues around health insurance policy and how patient attitudes affect population health—as well as how technology can advance medical access, cost and innovation.
- Sandra Waugh Ruggles, Juliana Perl, Zachary Sexton, Kevin Schulman and Josh Makower discuss the challenges of the current business model for breakthrough medical technologies. They present an analysis of how Medicare Coverage can be used to address the triple aim for Medicare beneficiaries – better care, better health, and lower cost.
- Looking back at health policy during the Trump administration, Joseph Antos and Sara Rosenbaum offer contrasting perspectives on the impact of administration policies on access and coverage, and the impact of these actions on the most vulnerable.
- Arzi Adbi, Chirantan Chatterjee and Pranjali Sharma examine the issue of information framing and the impact of differing frames on vaccine uptake in India.
- Stacy Wood, Richard Mather, Carolyn Hutyra and Kevin Schulman continue the evaluation of marketing strategies on patient engagement with a study of segmentation strategies for patients with osteoarthritis.
- Aazad Abbas, Jin Tong Du, Cari Whyne, Will Mitchell, and Jay Toor take us into supply chain management with a comparison of traditional procurement methodology to Total Cost of Ownership analysis in hospital procurement.
- Danny Goel and Ryan Lohre discuss the potential of a novel technology, immersive virtual reality (IVR), in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of surgical training.
- Rob Burns presents an overview of his new book examining the U.S. healthcare ecosystem, a very current overview of health care in the U.S.
Finally, Regi’s Case Corner features a new case examining Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership organized to accelerate the development of a COVID-19 vaccine in the US.
The COVID-19 pandemic stressed health care systems around the world. It exposed glaring gaps in equity within the health care delivery enterprise and across national borders, supply chain vulnerabilities across the system, and failures of data architectures in making information accessible to address the crisis. At the same time, the pandemic also offered hope in terms of the tremendous potential of biomedical innovation to bring vaccines based on novel science to the market with unprecedented speed and effectiveness.
It’s really important that we look back carefully to examine the pandemic and the response, to help highlight faults within the current system, and to help us innovate to a more effective and efficient system globally. This issue helps promote the dialogue around these opportunities.
Kevin Schulman, MD, MBA
Acting Editor in Chief, Health Management, Policy and Innovation (HMPI)
President, Business School Alliance for Health Management (BAHM)
Professor of Medicine, Stanford University