Date/Time: Monday, 10/26/09 at 6:00pm
Location: HBS Aldrich 112 (map/directions)

Healthcare in America  and the Kafkaesque system it has spawned are at the top of the national agenda.  Phrases like "nationalized healthcare", "socialized medicine", "end of life care", "public option", and "healthcare cooperatives" have politicized the public dialog with false alternatives.

Value-laden charges and counter-charges obscure the one issue that affects everyone:  that our healthcare system has now become a place where the real "consumers" play only a small role.  We are denied the benefits of a vibrant competitive marketplace, including the traditional benefits of free enterprise:  quality, cost, and convenience.

A variety of approaches to the roles of the three main stakeholders – consumer, provider and payer -- have been tried and demonstrated in other advanced nations.  The US has an inefficient system that operates mainly for the benefit of providers and payers.  America is unique today in its paradoxical lack of effective healthcare for a large segment of the population while spending the highest fraction of national income for healthcare. 

Professor Herzlinger's provocative talk will argue that running healthcare more like the "retail sector" business model will offer significant benefits in cost, quality and customer satisfaction.  The resulting system will be more inclusive and significantly more manageable.

Regina Herzlinger, author and national thought leader on what’s wrong and right with healthcare will make a timely presentation on the status of  healthcare in America : how  we got into the present  mess and the policy prescriptions to rationalize the system.  Her presentation will review the legislative policy cures currently being discussed and their impact on the business community and society as a whole.

Bio:
Regina E. Herzlinger is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration Chair at the Harvard Business School . She was the first woman to be tenured and chaired at Harvard Business School and the first to serve on a number of corporate boards.  Herzlinger has been selected as one of the outstanding instructors of the Harvard Business School MBA Program.

She is widely recognized for her innovative research in health care, including her early predictions of the unraveling of managed care and the rise of consumer-driven health care and health care focused factories, two terms that she coined.  MONEY magazine has dubbed her the "Godmother" of consumer-driven health care.  She was profiled most recently by BusinessWeek in "If Health Care Were Run like Retail".  Herzlinger is the author of several best-selling books on the healthcare system.  Her newest book Who Killed Health Care? (NY: McGraw-Hill, 2007), was selected by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as one of the ten books that changed the debate in 2008.

Schedule:

• 6:00 – 6:30: Informal networking / light dinner buffet
• 6:30 – 8:00: Presentation

• Member price through October 19: $35
• Member price October 20 and later: $40
• Non-Member price through October 19: $55
• Non-Member price October 20 and later: $60