Driving changes in health care delivery and education

The Harvard Macy Institute is accepting applications for the 2006 Program for Leaders in Health Care Education, to be held June 11-16 in Boston. This annual program brings together senior faculty from Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School to conduct interactive case discussions specifically designed to help leaders in academic medicine develop strategies for leading and managing systemic change.

The course is designed for faculty, including those in leadership positions in schools of medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, as well as medical education deans, department chairs, and curriculum committee chairs. The program’s directors emphasize that the course is focused on helping those people address the relationships between medical education and health care delivery as both of these areas change. These leaders, said Elizabeth Armstrong, PhD, director of the Harvard Macy Institute, must approach organizational change with a recognition of the complexity of the three-part mission of the academic medical center: education, clinical care, and research.

“This program offers the participating scholars the opportunity to examine patient care and medical education from a systems perspective, as complex processes that must be continually monitored, assessed, and revised in order to produce desired outcomes,” said Armstrong. “The relationships between the mission to prepare medical graduates, care for patients, and engage in biomedical research is the major challenge facing these scholars.”

Clayton Christensen

Armstrong serves as co-director of the course along with Joseph B. Martin, MD, PhD, dean of Harvard Medical School, and Clayton Christensen, DBA, MBA, MPhil, the Robert and Jane Cizik professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

Christensen is a globally recognized authority on innovation management and organizational change, widely sought after by leading competitors in a range of industries for his insight and expertise. During the Harvard Macy program, he utilizes classic management cases and other insight from the business world. The connections he draws between the challenges in industries like computer manufacturing and software development and the scholars’ domain of health care and medical education contribute to an eye-opening experience. In the 2006 program, he plans to introduce participants to theories of innovation and show how these ideas are applicable to the challenges present in the academic medical environment.

Asked to summarize what his knowledge and experience bring to the course, Christensen spoke instead of the benefits he receives from entering a domain outside of his milieu. “I have gained many important insights through my participation in the Harvard Macy Institute about the future of health care around the world. In particular, I have learned about the role leading medical schools need to play in shaping the future,” he said recently. This openness to explore outside of one’s regular paradigm is a perspective that the course encourages in the participants.

Christensen added, “The interdisciplinary collaboration and interaction that occurs during this program is unsurpassed anywhere else.”

The deadline for applying to the 2006 Program for Leaders in Health Care Education is January 21. For more information, please visit the Harvard Macy Institute website at www.harvardmacy.org.

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