Health Care Delivery Policy Program

The Health Care Delivery Policy (HCDP) Program provides a forum for the health care industry’s leading institutions and analysts to collaboratively assess strategic challenges and synthesize strategic care in the largest industrial category in the American economy, accounting for 15% of the Gross Domestic Product. Since the Harvard/Kennedy School Health Care Delivery Policy Program was created seven years ago, the exposure of the present American health care delivery system as unsustainable due to its unsafe character, low quality, and steeply rising cost has made it the primary domestic issue demanding reform. Much of the debate on system reform centers on the balance between the roles of business and government. Three times a year, HCDP gathers 20 senior executives from all sectors of health care delivery to debate nearly every aspect of America’s highly complex and dysfunctional health care delivery system. HCDP works to develop options for systemic transformation that the group’s members subsequently introduce to the market. HCDP’s director, Jerome H. Grossman, M.D., is leading three efforts to bring these general ideas to the public. He coauthored the joint National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine (NAE/IOM) report, Building a Better Delivery System; the Committee on Economic Development (CED) report, The Employer-Based Health Insurance System is Failing — What We Must Do About It; and a forthcoming book co-authored with Clay Christensen and Jason Hwang on the impact of disruptive technology on health care. HCDP affiliate Karen Eggleston, with participation of Joseph Newhouse and Ernie Berndt, has also advanced research on productivity in diabetes treatment. In addition to their formal meetings, the Health Care Delivery Policy group works to regularly present and update information central to research on delivery system reform. Cara Helfner, HCDP’s Medical Librarian/Research Associate, has developed and maintained the program’s multifaceted website, which includes presentations made by group speakers, a synopsis of HCDP’s projects and research, and The Numbers — a particularly in-depth resource that collects and analyzes data ranging from the total population of the United States to the number of individuals insured, by types of coverage. HCDP also issues reports on healthcare cost estimates, a volume of the fifteen leading chronic medical conditions, and insurance coverage by income quintile. All provided information has extensive bibliographies and is continually updated.With the 2008 election fast approaching, HCDP has become an increasingly essential resource for anyone concerned with healthcare reform as a political issue.