Redirecting Innovation in Healthcare - With Robert and James Rebitzer

James Rebitzer, Wexler Professor of Management at Boston University's Questrom School of Business, and his twin brother Robert Robitzer, Manatt Health National Advisor, have co-authored a new book about innovation in health care, “Why Not Better and Cheaper? Healthcare and Innovation” . The book is an engaging account of innovation in health care and why it matters for patients and society.

Bringing together research on incentives, social norms, and market competition, they argue that the healthcare system generates the wrong kinds of innovation. It is too easy to profit from low-value innovations and too hard to profit from innovations that reduce the costs of care. The result is a healthcare system that is profusely innovative yet remarkably ineffective in discovering ways to deliver increased value at lower cost. Why Not Better and Cheaper? sheds new light on the trajectory of innovation in healthcare, and how to point innovation in a better direction, including how to effectively leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and reap the benefits of this transformative new technology.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Robert Rebitzer works with the leaders of health care organizations on strategies to safely reduce costs and to improve the quality of care. His emphasis is on the successful implementation of business and clinical strategies, and he is recognized for the ability to engage the disparate groups needed for successful execution in health care—clinicians, payers, policymakers and the scientific community. His clients have included integrated delivery systems, health plans, academic medical centers, early-stage health services companies, health-oriented philanthropies, and state and local governments.

Robert was a partner, and a founding member, of Accenture’s strategy practice for the health care industry. There, his client work encompassed a range of functions and disciplines, including business and clinical strategy, the design and implementation of new models of care delivery, health plan operations improvement, and the governance of IT and other shared functions.

Robert was also a senior vice president at United Behavioral Health, the mental health division for UnitedHealth Group, where he led claims and customer service, new product development, regulatory compliance and the implementation of statistical quality control (Lean/Six Sigma).

In addition, he was the founding chief operating officer for Stanford University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center, which uses human-centered design—and qualitative research methods—to create lower-cost models of care delivery. Robert has also served as an advisor to the California Healthcare Foundation and to various early-stage and mid-size health care services companies.

James B. Rebitzer is a Peter and Deborah Wexler Professor of Management at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. His research and teaching focus on organizational economics with a special emphasis on behavioral issues in the economics of human resource systems. Much of his recent research concerns organizational issues in the US healthcare system. He was founding chair of the Markets, Public Policy and Law Department from 2009 through 2018. He is also a professor of economics (by courtesy) in the College of Arts and Sciences Economics Department.

Prior to coming to BU in August 2009, James Rebitzer was the Mannix Professor of Health Care Finance and Economics and also the Chair of the Economics Department at Case’s Weatherhead School of Management. Before arriving at Case in 1998, he was an assistant and associate professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management (1989-1997); and prior to that was an assistant professor in the Economics Department at the University of Texas at Austin (1985-1998). He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

James has published papers in many academic journals including The American Economic Review, The Journal of Political Economy, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Health Economics, The Journal of Labor Economics, The Journal of Public Economics, Management Science, The Rand Journal of Economics, The Journal of Economics, Behavior and Organizations, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, and the Journal of Economic Literature. Articles about his research have appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

For more information about the Rebitzers click here

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Lisa Suennen has spent over 35 years in healthcare and technology as venture capitalist, entrepreneur, operating executive, and strategy consultant. She has worked broadly across healthcare and life sciences, and especially where these sectors converge with technology.

Lisa is currently Managing Partner of American Heart Association Ventures, a multi-fund platform investing in companies across the full spectrum of healthcare and social determinants of health. She has also held General Partner roles at several venture funds, including Manatt Ventures, Psilos Group and GE Ventures, where she led the healthcare venture fund and sat on the overall GE Ventures Investment Committee.

Lisa has also held executive-level operating roles at Canary Medical, Merit Behavioral Care and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. Lisa was Co-founder and CEO of CSweetener, a company focused on matching mentors with rising healthcare leaders (sold to HLTH Foundation). She chairs the Scientific Advisory Board of the NASA -funded Translational Research Institute for Space Health and the International Investment Committee of the Australian & Victorian government-funded ANDHealth Digital Health Fund, and serves on the advisory boards of several emerging companies.

Lisa is a Fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Health Innovators Fellowship and on faculty at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business where she teaches the annual class on healthcare innovation and investment. Lisa writes the Venture Valkyrie blog and is an internationally recognized author and speaker.