One of the great joys in my year is teaching a class at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public on Health Care Delivery Reform in the US. See the course description and a recent syllabus to learn more. I am always adding to the course, so let me know if you have ideas.

Health care delivery in the US is an enormous, complex, and fragmented system of hospitals, clinics, rehabilitation facilities and other services. These systems have matured under the payment incentives and culture of US health care to emphasize high volumes of services, often neglecting population health and patient experience as key goals. Increasing recognition that the current delivery system fails to deliver person-centered, high quality health care to populations has led to many delivery reform initiatives. These reforms are where the “rubber hits the road” for health systems adapting to new payment incentives and shifting the status quo.

The overall purpose of this course is to provide students with a strong foundation of knowledge on the current state of the US health care delivery system and to develop tools to understand and critically evaluate major delivery reforms. This course has three main objectives:

1. Illustrate the current state of health care delivery across the spectrum of settings (e.g. hospital, clinic, nursing home) and the major challenges facing this system;
2. Develop a deep understanding of important delivery reform initiatives being pursued across the US and critically evaluate their capacity to achieve intended change
3. Explore the challenges in implementing these delivery reforms.