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Pellere
by Stephen Parente, director
Welcome to the second edition of Pulse, the newsletter of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute.
In my last letter, I rather audaciously challenged us to “get to work.” I’m pleased to say that this challenge has been taken up by a group of talented students who have spent a great deal of time starting a medical industry career club. These student leaders include Jonathan Hovda, the University of Minnesota’s first simultaneous MD and MBA candidate; Jeremy Jenkins and Katie Dziak McBride, joint MBA and MHA seekers; as well as MBA candidates Stephan Dunning, Stacy Eichenlaub, Crystal Hughes, and Matthew Tarjick. I look forward to seeing the results of their efforts in the coming year and welcome and encourage former students and community leaders to engage us to provide a forum for dialog in our very dynamic industry.
I also want to thank all of you for your positive response to the first issue of Pulse. Our readership exceeded expectations, as well as the statistical norm. Your comments, offers of guest lectures, and ideas for collaboration, have been welcomed. I want to continue to encourage greater feedback and dialog. Contact me or Jessica Haupt at mili@umn.edu.
Recently, institute program coordinator Jessica Haupt and I attended a student meeting at a local pub, Grandma’s. While meeting, we received news of the 35W collapse, which occurred one block from us. While we watched in surreal disbelief and sadness, the sense of community around the table was reaffirming and hopeful. I consider myself fortunate that day because my family, friends, and colleagues were all safe and I was surrounded by people who were deeply affected by the present, and wanted to build a better tomorrow.
The Future of Health Insurance
What would it cost to provide universal health insurance? How many fewer millions of uninsured would there be? How long would it take? What types of health insurance would be available and at what price? For the last three years, University of Minnesota professors Stephen Parente and Roger Feldman have been working to answer the questions that health policy experts ask every day.
Their most recent work focuses on President Bush’s proposals for creating health price and quality transparency and for providing a standard tax deduction for all health insurance. The researchers have developed a national computer simulation model that accounts for all U.S. citizens eligible for private health insurance, including the uninsured. This model predicts the number of citizens leaving the ranks of the uninsured under different health reform proposals. It can predict the growth of consumer driven health plans and HMOs. It also provides an estimate for the cost to taxpayers of different health reform proposals. For example, under one proposed health reform option, the number of uninsured would be reduced from 45 million today to 7 million at a cost of approximately $200 billion.
The research has received almost $1 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Health and the work is scheduled to continue into the 2008 election season. Parente expects this research to inform the long-running debate on the cost and impact of potential U.S. health reform options. He shares the findings with government, special interest groups, and the community. This fall, he will present new findings from the simulation models at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. He will present additional results on the impact of health savings accounts on U.S. retirement decisions at the National Bureau of Economic Research, at an October Carlson School alumni event, and at the Carlson School’s speaker’s series First Tuesday in spring 2008. Findings from earlier presentations and simulations are available at ehealthplan.org.
A Prescription for Success
Live case delivers decisive consulting
Imagine this scene: your cranky, feverish five-year-old child has a sore throat. You need to take him to the doctor, but you also have your two-year old in tow. So, you load them up, buckle them in, drive to the doctor’s office, unload, unbuckle, go through the registration process, sit down with the doctor and bingo … its strep. You get advice and a written prescription, but wouldn’t it be great (and a lot less complicated) if you could walk out the door with the first dose of medicine administered and the actual prescription in your hands?
That was the image presented to 123 MBA students at the Carlson School in December 2006 at the opening of a live case competition organized by the Carlson School’s MBA program. The case company was McKesson, a Fortune Global 500 corporation that provides pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and technologies to a variety of customers. Formed in 1946, it has dominated the medical supplies market. Should McKesson enter the in-office prescription dispensing business?
Twenty-four teams entered the competition. Faculty judges winnowed the teams down to four that could advance to the final presentation event with McKesson judges. Who won? Two teams ultimately influenced McKesson, despite opposing ideas about the business venture. According to Tim Caver, director of segment marketing at the McKesson medical-surgical division and one of the judges for the case, “We couldn’t have paid for all this advice.”
“Every student team did a phenomenal job, working extremely fast, pulling it all together,” said Gary Keeler, president of McKesson alternate site sales at the McKesson medical-surgical division. He served as the second judge for the competition. “I was impressed by their sheer tenacity!”
When Keeler pitched Caver the case competition idea, Caver saw it as a win-win opportunity. “I was down one marketing person at the time and had been struggling to put together a market analysis on my own … meeting one-on-one with customers and just not getting the data I needed,” said Caver. “When I heard about the competition, I immediately agreed to it.”
At the conclusion of the competition, Caver and Keeler identified one team as the winner. “But,” Caver said, “that was because McKesson came into the competition wanting to enter this market. So, we chose the team who made the best recommendation for going forward.”
The winners promoted the venture because they saw a strategic value in entering the market and preempting future competition. The second-place team believed the venture would not be profitable enough and posed overwhelming challenges to achieving success. Since December, Caver and his team have more carefully considered the legal barriers to embarking on this venture. Ultimately, both teams offered advice and uncovered valuable information that McKesson has used to further consider the possibilities of the venture.
Rhonda Paulson, a member of the official winning team, says participating in the live case competition provided a great opportunity to take the individual components of each class over the semester and employ them all to develop a strong business plan. “It helped me understand that no one issue or project is just about marketing or just about finance.”
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By Kelly DeBrine, External Relations, Carlson School of Management |
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Course spotlight on Medical Technology Evaluation and Market Research
The innovative and popular Medical Industry Leadership Institute course Medical Technology Evaluation and Market Research (MILI 6589) is one of the required courses for obtaining the medical industry specialization. It will next be offered in spring 2008.
Class of 2008 MBA-MHA candidate Katie Dziak McBride says, "This class provided key insights into the medical technology field. Also, it gave me a chance to apply that new knowledge. I don't know of any other class where you are allowed to present to healthcare industry leaders from organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, Medtronic and UnitedHealth Group."
In the class, students study innovations in medical technology, a major area of global economic growth. Medical technology encompasses pharmaceutical, medical device, biotechnology, information technology, and combinations of these areas. The course provides hands-on experience that will allow future managers to create the value proposition for new medical technologies. Students gain analytical skills, knowledge, and practical experience that will help them climb the leadership path in the medical technology, insurance, and delivery industries. Students receive personal input from industry leaders at medical technology companies.
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Student spotlight on Jonathan Hovda
Jonathan Hovda is the first simultaneous dual-degree MBA-MD candidate at the University of Minnesota Medical School and the Carlson School of Management. The dual-degree program allows students to earn both degrees in five years, instead of the six years it would take to earn the degrees separately. Students attend three years of medical school, followed by one year at the Carlson School, then finish with one semester in each program. Hovda completed his year at the Carlson School in spring 2007.
While at the school, he researched physician pay-for-performance, examining how technology and consumer-driven health plans may shape the future of health care. He looked at advantages, disadvantages, the role of quality, and plan design. In the Medical Industry Leadership Institute course Medical Technology Evaluation and Market Research, Hovda was a member of a team that analyzed the medical tourism market. The team performed a cost-analysis, examined risks and benefits, and presented their findings to executives from UnitedHealth Group, the Mayo Clinic, and Medtronic. Jonathan also analyzed the physician decision-making environment, with respect to their interactions with industry and how and why physicians decide which pharmaceutical and medical devices they will use.
Currently, Hovda is completing his medical rotations and will graduate from medical school in December. Hovda will return to the Carlson School in spring 2008, where he will complete his MBA with a medical industry specialization. He will begin residency in July 2008 and is interested in internal medicine. After graduation, Hovda plans to practice medicine and leverage his business training to provide the most appropriate, cost-effective care possible. Ultimately, he would like to see patients, as well as work in a leadership role with physicians, administrators, payers, and industry.
Medical Industry Student Group
The Medical Industry Leadership Institute is pleased to announce a new institute student group for MBA students. The group is planning a series of fall speakers, as well as networking events for faculty, industry representatives, and members of the student group.
The group is laying the foundation for a new set of global medical industry leaders by:
- Developing and promoting a sustainable network of professionals, inside and outside the Carlson School, who are associated with all aspects of the medical industry.
- Providing opportunities and exposure to current topics in the industry.
- Creating avenues for successful transition into this field.
This group brings together the talents of MBA students with a passion for the medical industry.
By Stacy Eichenlaub, MBA Candidate, class of ‘07
Jeremy Jenkins Receives Scholarship
Jeremy L. Jenkins, MHA-MBA candidate 2008, is a recipient of this year's Foster G. McGaw Graduate Student Scholarship from the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE). Given annually, the Foster G. McGaw Graduate Student Scholarship is designated for students enrolled in their final year of a healthcare management graduate program. Foster G. McGaw was the founder of American Hospital Supply Corporation. |
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Faculty spotlight on Paul Johnson
Paul Johnson, professor and Curtis L. Carlson Chair in Decision Sciences is a member of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute’s faculty council. He is also a recipient of one of the institute’s 2007 small grant awards. Professor Johnson’s proposed research focuses on “Improving Chronic Disease Care Using Data Mining and Personalization Technologies.” The project unites researchers from the Carlson School, the University of Minnesota’s Department of Computer Science, and the collaborating industry partner, HealthPartners.
Johnson’s recent work has focused on the problem of medical error and the thinking and decisions that lead up to it. One application of this work has been directed toward changing physician thinking to improve quality-of-care outcomes. In the MILI initiative Johnson’s group will seek ways to match the resources in current physician thinking to the needs of individual patients.
In collaboration with the physicians and researchers from the HealthPartners Research Foundation, Johnson has spent several years engaged in NIH and AHRQ sponsored research that investigates physician-thinking and the problem of error in the treatment of patients with type 2 diabetes. Physicians often fail to adequately treat diabetic patients who are not at evidence based goals due to factors that include multiple demands on physician time, the need to evaluate and treat multiple health problems in a given visit, and the reluctance of a number of patients to make necessary lifestyle/behavior changes. Failure to treat can lead to serious medical complications that may require significant medical intervention as well as considerable cost to remedy. Johnson’s recent work has focused on understanding as well as preventing these “errors of omission,” or what is sometimes referred to as clinical inertia.
Johnson’s work has led him to the conclusion that in some cases it may not be practical--or, even desirable-- to change physician thinking. In his proposed research, Johnson’s team will use results from earlier work to develop simulated clinical databases that capture characteristics of real physician-patient encounters. By applying data mining techniques to these databases, the researchers hope to identify physician practice patterns that predict quality-of-care outcomes. Johnson and team will then develop personalization technologies that enable matching specific physician practice patterns with characteristics of patient subgroups. By matching physicians to specific groups of patients, they hope to achieve a reduction in error and improve quality-of-care outcomes.
Johnson’s research group has already developed software that can help determine how medical errors are made and how doctors can be trained to avoid them. The researchers are currently using the software to detect patterns of physician thinking with a goal of changing physician behavior before errors occur. When the software finds evidence of decision-making that is linked with known treatment errors, it generates a communication recommending the physician review one or more cases that illustrate ways to avoid these errors. In 2007 the University and HealthPartners jointly applied for a patent application for this software.
For more information on this research see Professor Johnson’s profile at: http://www.carlsonschool.umn.edu/Page2075.aspx?type=faculty&eid=147589827
Faculty news
Recent activities of Carlson School faculty and institute faculty affiliates.
Rajesh Chandy was quoted in a February 19 article "It's Part Medicine, Part Marketing in Naming Heart Stents," by Christopher Snowbeck published in The Charlotte Observer, Miami Herald, Monterey Herald, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Fargo Forum, West Central Tribune, Akron Beacon Journal, The Wichita Eagle, and the Biloxi Sun Herald.
Stephen Parente is an invited participant on the Minnesota Governor’s Health Cabinet, and in June, he participated in the 2007 Health Law Institute which focused on “Cost Drivers in Health Care.”
Kingshuk Sinha presented his paper, “Product Recalls in the Medical Device Industry: An Empirical Exploration of the Sources and Consequences,” at the Wharton Technology Mini-Conference on April 20 at the Wharton School. The paper was co-authored by Carlson School doctoral candidate Sriram Thirumalai.
Sheryl Winston Smith presented her work "Strategic Venturing in the Global Medical Device Industry: Corporate Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Clinician-Researchers" at the Copenhagen Business School in June. This paper demonstrates that entrepreneurial clinician-researchers play a significant role in the innovation strategy of global medical device firms.
Stephen Parente recently gave a number of interviews with Minnesota Public Radio. In February he discussed, “Minnesota Still Test-Driving Consumer-Driven Health Plans.” In March he participated in “Policy and a Pint: Health Care Handcuffs.” This event, hosted by the Current and the Citizens League, featured Parente and chief economic reporter Chris Farrell of Minnesota Public Radio (MPR). It was moderated by Steve Seel from MPR. More recently he was interviewed for “Children’s Hospitals announces $300 million expansion.”
In April, Kathleen Vohs presented “A Tripartite Model of Compulsive Spending: Who Will Develop Overspending Problems?” at the Conference on Transformative Consumer Research at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business in July.
Stephen Parente was featured in the May 28, 2007 Business Week article, “Health Care You Control.”
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Faculty publications
Recent publications by institute faculty affiliates.
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R. Feldman, S. T. Parente, and J. B. Christianson, "Consumer-Directed Health Plans: New Evidence on Spending and Utilization," Inquiry 44 (2007): 26-40.
Johnson M. Guion, A. Tewfik, K. P. Madhu, and A. G. Erdman, "Using Voice-Recognition Technology to Eliminate Cardiac Cycle Segmentation in Automated Heart Sound Diagnosis," Biomed.Instrum.Technol. 41, no. 2 (2007): 157-166.
Parente, S, “Introducing the Carlson School’s Medical Industry Leadership Institute, MetroDoctors (Journal of the Hennepin & Ramsey Medical Societies). May/June 2007
P. Seat and R. Town, "Losing Insurance and Using the Emergency Department: Critical Effect of Transition to Adulthood for Youth With Chronic Conditions," Journal of Adolescent Health 40, no. 2 (2007): S4.
R. J. Town, D. R. Wholey, R. D. Feldman, and L. R. Burns, "Hospital Consolidation and Racial/Income Disparities in Health Insurance Coverage," Health Aff.(Millwood.) 26, no. 4 (2007): 1170-1180.
R. J. Town, D. Wholey, R. Feldman, and L. R. Burns, "Revisiting the Relationship Between Managed Care and Hospital Consolidation," Health Serv.Res. 42, no. 1 Pt 1 (2007): 219-238. |
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Alumni Spotlight on Kevin Blalock
Kevin Blalock, ’05 MBA, is participating in Medtronic’s Leadership Development Rotational Program. His current assignment is in sales strategies and operations for Medtronic’s Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management Division. Blalock’s first two years at Medtronic were focused on business development for the Neuromodulation Division.
He credits the Carlson School’s well-rounded curriculum and the specific focus of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute with preparing him for his career. "Because of the high concentration of medical industry talent and high-performing organizations in this area, the Carlson School has a unique opportunity to combine its faculty, research, students, and access to industry leaders to create an experience that sets the school and its students apart, " says Blalock, who also took part in the Carlson Ventures Enterprise, in which students, guided by professionals and faculty, advise real-world start up businesses, entrepreneurs and investors,
"I gained a greater understanding of the industry through MILI classes and was able to focus on health care deals in the Ventures Enterprise. I was exposed daily to experts in the industry- who include my classmates who had previously worked in the industry. Carlson students can - and are - competing with candidates from top business schools around the country for coveted positions. We are leading organizations in our industry as well as anyone."
Prior to attending the Carlson School, Kevin graduated with a BS in Chemistry from Erskine College in South Carolina. His background includes work in process engineering, manufacturing, and operational management positions in the textile and automotive industries, as well as consulting engagements in the life sciences in the Great Lakes region and Europe.
Institute ambassadors
Institute ambassadors are experienced executives and entrepreneurs from national and local medical firms as well as venture capital, banking, and consulting firms with strong connections to the medical industry. The Medical Industry Leadership Institute invited a select number of professionals excited to become ambassadors for the institute. In support of the institute’s mission, they sponsor seminars and other institute events, provide guidance on executive education, institute curriculum and financial sustainability, facilitate placement opportunities, and participate in joint research projects.
The institute recently held its first ambassador recognition event at the Lafayette Club, a Minnetonka, Minn. country club. The event was a networking opportunity for the institute’s national industry council, ambassadors, faculty council, and student council. The event created a venue for dialogue on the health care and medical industry market. William McGuire, MD former chairman and CEO of UnitedHealth Group gave a special presentation, A Prescription for the U.S. Health Care Market. A health policy response was given by institute ambassador Michael O’Grady, former Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Department of Health and Human Services.
Through their contributions and expertise, ambassadors are positively impacting the leadership development and placement potential for the next generation of industry leaders. |
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National industry council
The National industry council is comprised of senior-level executives from national medical firms, as well as from banking and consulting firms with strong connections to this industry. The council supports the institute, its mission, and the Carlson School by providing leadership in joint venture research projects, national outreach, general advocacy, and ambassadorship for the institute. The council engages in experiential learning, advises on the institute’s education agenda, facilitates contact with industry firms to enhance graduate placement opportunities, and offers guidance to the institute on the development of relevant Executive Education programs.
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Faculty council
The Faculty council represents the Carlson School, as well as University of Minnesota units with research and educational interests that intersect with the medical industry sector.
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