wharton's prescription for health care - Wharton Magazine

FEATURETHE PROGRAMEach year, 40 MBA students with backgrounds in all segmentsof the industry — pharmaceuticals, hospitals,consulting companies, medical practices, insurers and thepublic policy arena — enter Wharton’s health care managementprogram. Approximately 15 percent of those arephysicians, and three to four each year do a joint MBA-MDprogram with Penn’s medical school.Between 15 and 20 undergraduates a year concentrate inhealth care, and three to four candidates enter the doctoralprogram.The MBA students are required to take the same corecourses as the other MBAs, as well as five health care majorcourses plus electives. The program also includes anadvanced study project and a summer internship at a healthcare organization.During its 25 years, the curriculum has continuallychanged to reflect the evolution of health care delivery. Butover the past decade, that pace ofchange has accelerated as new relationshipshave formed amonghealth professionals, hospitalsand third party payers.Last year, for example, acourse was added on collaborativestructures in healthcare delivery in response tothe creation of integrateddelivery networks and newalignments of doctors andhospitals. The course looksat the complex organizationaldesigns and managementchallenges of these newentities.In 1990, says Kinney, the department added a course onthe pharmaceutical industry. “Pharmaceutical companiesused to focus mainly on just marketing their products. Nowthey are concerned with cost effectiveness, price pressuresand the challenges of having to sell in a managed careenvironment.”“Many of our courses evolve as the environmentchanges,” adds Danzon. “For example, the course on HMOsand managed care used to be called health care financingand it looked at employer considerations in choosinga health plan. While that is still covered, the coursenow looks more at management and internal controlswithin HMOs.”Running throughout the program is the theme of sharingrisk among different payers, hospitals and physicians,says Kinney. “That involves much more complicated informationsystems that look at such things as data on medicaloutcomes, cost benefit and cost effectiveness analysis anddisease management.”▼The issue of access to health care for the uninsured,among other policy issues, is covered in health economics,while a course on comparative health systems looks at howcountries like England, Germany, Canada and Japan financeand manage health care.The success of Wharton’s program is indicated by its highrankings in national polls and its ability to draw top healthcare students. “Because of our positioning — in a businessschool, with a strong insurance and economics base in ourfaculty and with strong ties to the medical, nursing anddental schools — we attract business talent which may nothave gone into this field otherwise,” notes Kinney. “Theseare the kinds of people you need to accomplish this task ofintroducing market concepts into a field that has been dominatedby the old values, which were to spend and not takeaccount of efficiency.”When the health care program went from being a unit toa full-fledged department in 1983, it also meant the additionof faculty whose primary appointments were in health caresystems. Several of these faculty have been involved inhealth care issues in the national arena: During the debateDanzon: “Our program exists because health care does respondto market forces. Competitive pressures have become much moreaggressive and management skills have become essential.”Pauly: “You can never hope anymore that you will have enough resources inan HMO or Medicare to [cover all the medical procedures] that can possibly dosome good. So the challenge is to decide which are the most worth doing.”▼over universal health insurance in theearly 1990s, Danzon and Pauly wrote aproposal with two colleagues for nationalhealth care reform that would obligate all Americans topurchase basic health insurance and make such insuranceaffordable to all income groups, regardless of their employmentstatus.Danzon also has done research on Canadian health careand has analyzed pricing systems for pharmaceuticals. Paulyis writing a book on the impact of business on the healthreform debate and, in a separate project, is analyzing HMOs’treatment of new technology and how that influenceswhich kinds of insurance people buy. With a colleague, heis conducting a study on the cost of hospice care for peoplewith AIDS.Lawton Burns, associate professor of health care systemsand co-author of a recent book called Health Care Management,is part of a four-university research team studying integrateddelivery systems in 10 hospitals. “Right now,” he says,“nobody knows what impact these systems will have. The9W HARTON ALUMNI MAGAZINE