An Essential Guide to the Processes and Operational Complexities of the U.S. Healthcare System The U.S. Healthcare Ecosystem serves as an expert navigator through the complicated and often confusing environment where healthcare payers, healthcare providers, and producers of healthcare technologies all interact. This thorough resource provides expert insight and analysis of employer-based health insurance, pharmacy benefits, the major professions, healthcare consolidation, drug discovery and development, biotechnology, and much more. Packed with timely examples and filled with illustrations, The U.S. Healthcare Ecosystem will inspire you to think more critically about the business of healthcare and make informed assessments. Features: Includes often neglected topics impacting healthcare delivery such as employer-based health insurance, pharmacy benefits, healthcare consolidation, and biotechnology Highly readable and single-authored by a Wharton Professor who has taught health care delivery and management for over 20 years Filled to the brim with helpful diagrams, charts and tables - nearly 350 figures complement the text Every chapter ends with a helpful Summary and Questions to Ponder

The Business of Healthcare Innovation is the first wide-ranging analysis of business trends in the manufacturing segment of the health care industry. In this leading edge volume, Professor Burns focuses on the key role of the 'producers' as the main source of innovation in health systems. Written by professors of the Wharton School and industry executives, this book provides a detailed overview of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, genomics/proteomics, medical device and information technology sectors. It analyses the market structures of these sectors as well as the business models and corporate strategies of firms operating within them. Most importantly, the book describes the growing convergence between these sectors and the need for executives in one sector to increasingly draw upon trends in the others. It will be essential reading for students and researchers in the field of health management, and of great interest to strategy scholars, industry practitioners and management consultants.

Managed health care is one of the most confusing areas any consumer can deal with. Rules and regulations are constantly changing, providers are always merging and changing their offerings, and paperwork abounds. In easy-to-understand language, this book explains how to understand options, how to get treatment for chronic and long-term illnesses, how to get the most care for the least cost, and more.

There is little debate that health care in the United States is in need of reform. But where should those improvements begin? With insurers? Drug makers? The doctors themselves? In Big Med, David Dranove and Lawton Robert Burns argue that we’re overlooking the most ubiquitous cause of our costly and underperforming system: megaproviders, the expansive health care organizations that have become the face of American medicine. Your local hospital is likely part of one. Your doctors, too. And the megaproviders are bad news for your health and your wallet. Drawing on decades of combined expertise in health care consolidation, Dranove and Burns trace Big Med’s emergence in the 1990s, followed by its swift rise amid false promises of scale economies and organizational collaboration. In the decades since, megaproviders have gobbled up market share and turned independent physicians into salaried employees of big bureaucracies, while delivering on none of their early promises. For patients this means higher costs and lesser care. Meanwhile, physicians report increasingly low morale, making it all but impossible for most systems to implement meaningful reforms. In Big Med, Dranove and Burns combine their respective skills in economics and management to provide a nuanced explanation of how the provision of health care has been corrupted and submerged under consolidation. They offer practical recommendations for improving competition policies that would reform megaproviders to actually achieve the efficiencies and quality improvements they have long promised. This is an essential read for understanding the current state of the health care system in America—and the steps urgently needed to create an environment of better care for all of us.

Provides a diverse, multi-faceted approach to health care evaluation and management The U.S. Health Care System: Origins, Organization and Opportunities provides a comprehensive introduction and resource for understanding healthcare management in the United States. It brings together the many "moving parts" of this large and varied system to provide both a bird's-eye view as well as relevant details of the complex mechanisms at work. By focusing on stakeholders and their interests, this book analyzes the value propositions of the buyers and sellers of healthcare products and services along with the interests of patients. The book begins with a presentation of frameworks for understanding the structure of the healthcare system and its dynamic stakeholder inter-relationships. The chapters that follow each begin with their social and historical origins, so the reader can fully appreciate how that area evolved. The next sections on each topic describe the current environment and opportunities for improvement. Throughout, the learning objectives focus on three areas: frameworks for understanding issues, essential factual knowledge, and resources to keep the reader keep up to date. Healthcare is a rapidly evolving field, due to the regulatory and business environments as well as the advance of science. To keep the content current, online updates are provided at: healthcareinsights.md. This website also offers a weekday blog of important/interesting news and teaching notes/class discussion suggestions for instructors who use the book as a text. The U.S. Health Care System: Origins, Organization and Opportunities is an ideal textbook for healthcare courses in MBA, MPH, MHA, and public policy/administration programs. In piloting the content, over the past several years the author has successfully used drafts of chapters in his Healthcare Systems course for MBA and MPH students at Northwestern University. The book is also useful for novice or seasoned suppliers, payers and providers who work across the healthcare field and want a wider or deeper understanding of the entire system.

NEW GUIDE DECODES VALUE-BASED CARE AND PAYMENT MODELS As value-based care is coming of age, deciding how to start can be an overwhelming task. Risks are high and success with the new models is challenging and time consuming. This book fills an important need by providing concrete and proven strategies to aid in an organization's successful transformation. The book is filled with practical, no-nonsense advice on the shift to value-based care in both the private and public healthcare sectors. This is the time when healthcare stakeholders need to rethink their own added-value strategies in a manner that best serves patients and providers alike. In the complicated world of payment and delivery system reform, this book deconstructs the most challenging concepts for the novice yet provides sophisticated insights for even the most seasoned executive. BONUS! The authors also lay out high-value strategies for 20 different subspecialties with specialty-specific changes in the way medicine is practiced and paid for.

This volume provides a comprehensive review of China's healthcare system and policy reforms in the context of the global economy. Following a value-chain framework, the 16 chapters cover the payers, the providers, and the producers (manufacturers) in China's system. It also provides a detailed analysis of the historical development of China's healthcare system, the current state of its broad reforms, and the uneasy balance between China's market-driven approach and governmental regulation. Most importantly, it devotes considerable attention to the major problems confronting China, including chronic illness, public health, and long-term care and economic security for the elderly. Burns and Liu have assembled the latest research from leading health economists and political scientists, as well as senior public health officials and corporate executives, making this book an essential read for industry professionals, policymakers, researchers, and students studying comparative health systems across the world.