In 2013, Burns joined the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management as a Faculty Co-Director.
(meta data) TITLE: Lawton R. Burns - Health Care Management Skip to content Skip to main menu Health Care Management # Lawton R. Burns James Joo-Jin Kim Professor, Professor of Health Care ManagementProfessor of Management ## Contact Information Primary Email: burnsl@wharton.upenn.eduOffice Phone: (215) 898-3711 office Address: 203 Colonial Penn Center3641 Locust WalkPhiladelphia, PA 19104 Research Interests: formal organizations, health care management, hospital-physician relationships, integrated health care, physician networks, physician practice management firms, strategic change, supply chain management Links: CV, Personal Website the News ## Overview ## Education PhD, University of Chicago, 1981; MBA, University of Chicago, 1984; MA, University of Chicago, 1976; BA, Haverford College, 1973 ## Recent Consulting Analysis of the pharmaceutical outsourcing market, IMB, 2003-04; Antitrust implications of PHOs, Federal Trade Commission, 2004; Development of integrated delivery systems, Illinois Hospital Association, 1994-97 ## Career and Recent Professional Awards; Teaching Awards 2003: Board of Institute of Medicine, Health Services Research Section; 2001: Arthur Anderson Distinguished Visitor, University of Cambridge (UK); 1999:Teacher of the Year, Administrative Medicine Program, School of Medicine, University of Wisconsin; 1992-93: Edwin Crosby Memorial Fellowship, Hospital Research and Educational Trust; 1990-91: Udall Fellowship, Udall Center for Public Policy; 1997: Invited Lecture Series, Catholic University of Rome, Luiss, and National Agency for Health Care Services (Rome) ## Academic Positions Held Wharton: 1994-present (Chairperson, Health Care Systems Department, 2008-present; named James Joo-Jin Kim Professor, 1999; Director, Wharton Center for Health Management and Economics, 1999-present). Previous appointments: University of Arizona; University of Chicago. Visiting appointment: University of Wisconsin Professional Leadership 2005-2009 Editorial Board, Health Services Research, 1994-present ## Biosketch Lawton Robert Burns, Ph.D., MBA, is the Chair of the Health Care Management Department, the James Joo-Jin Kim Professor, a Professor of Health Care Management, and a Professor of Management in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also Director of the Wharton Center for Health Management & Economics, and Co-Director of the Roy & Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management. He received his doctorate in Sociology and his MBA in Health Administration from the University of Chicago. Dr. Burns taught previously in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago and the College of Business Administration at the University of Arizona. Dr. Burns has analyzed physician-hospital integration over the past 25 years. In recognition of this research, Dr. Burns was named the Edwin L. Crosby Memorial Fellow by the Hospital Research and Educational Trust in 1992. Dr. Burns has also published several papers on hospital systems and physician group practices. The last 13 years he spent studying the healthcare supply chain. He completed a book on supply chain management in the healthcare industry, The Health Care Value Chain (Jossey-Bass, 2002), and a recent analysis of alliances between imaging equipment makers and hospital systems. These studies focus on the strategic alliances and partnerships developing between pharmaceutical firms/distributors, disposable manufacturers, medical device manufacturers, group purchasing organizations, and organized delivery systems. He has also edited The Business of Healthcare Innovation (Cambridge University Press, 2012) which analyzes the healthcare technology sectors globally: pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices, and information technology. Most recently, he has served as lead editor of the 6th Edition of the major text, Healthcare Management: Organization Design & Behavior (Delmar, 2011). His latest book, India's Healthcare Industry, was just published in 2014 (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Dr. Burns teaches courses on healthcare strategy, strategic change, strategic implementation, organization and management, managed care, and integrated delivery networks. From 1998-2002, he was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, where he taught corporate strategy to physicians. Dr. Burns also received an Investigator Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study the reasons for failure in organizational change efforts by healthcare providers. He is a past member of the Grant Review Study Section for the Agency for Health Care Policy & Research, and a past board member of the Health Services Section of the Institute of Medicine. He is also a Life Fellow of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge. Continue Reading ## Research Assessment of GPOs: The National Survey of Materials Management & Purchasing Executives Offical Rules Jeff C. Goldsmith, Lawton R. Burns, Aditi Sen, Trevor Goldsmith Integrated Delivery Networks: In Search of Benefits and Market Effects. Guy David, Rich Lindrooth, Lorens Helmchen, Lawton R. Burns (2014), Do Hospitals Cross Subsidize?, Journal of Health Economics. Aditi Sen, Lawton R. Burns, Michael Dandorph, Suzanne Sawyer (Draft), Physician Referral and the Potential for ACOs in Philadelphia. Abstract: Implementation of the Affordable Care Act has far-reaching implications for the U.S. health care delivery system. In particular, achieving the type of integrated patient care that health care reform calls for (e.g., through "accountable care organizations" or ACOs) will require major organizational changes to the health delivery system. Despite increased focus on ACOs, little is known about how these changes will be carried out, particularly in complex urban settings where there are numerous providers and payers and long-standing networks already in place. We provide the first market-wide analysis of the potential for ACO development in this type of market. We focus on primary care physician referrals to specialists, which will play a key role in coordination of care through ACOs and will likely have to be adapted to meet quality and cost objectives. We find that physicians base referrals largely on experience and personal ties and that it would take sizable incentives (10-15% of reimbursement) for physicians to change practices. Across the market, we find that though there is uncertainty about ACO implementation, stakeholders anticipate changes in provider relationships, reimbursement, and data capacity. Lawton R. Burns, India's Healthcare Industry: Innovation in Delivery, Financing, and Manufacturing (2014) Abstract: This book analyzes the historical development and current state of India's healthcare industry. It describes three sets of institutions that deliver healthcare services, finance these services, and manufacture products used in these services. These institutions provide healthcare (hospitals, physicians, pharmacies, and diagnostic laboratories), pay for healthcare (individuals who pay out-of-pocket, insurance companies, community insurance schemes, government ministries) and produce the technology used in healthcare delivery (pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and medical devices). The volume also discusses innovative efforts to raise capital for the development of these sectors. Finally, it includes three interesting case studies of innovative models of healthcare delivery (L. V. Prasad, Aravind, and Vaatsalya), as well as analyses of other innovative organizations like Narayana Hrudaylaya and the hospital chains. The contributors to the volume include Wharton faculty members, graduates of Wharton's healthcare MBA program, and executives and consultants from India. Aditi Sen, Jessica Pickett, Lawton R. Burns, "The Health Insurance Sector in India: History and Opportunities". In India's Healthcare Industry: Innovation in Delivery, Financing, and Manufacturing, edited by Lawton R. Burns, (2014), pp. 361-400 Abstract: To request a copy of this article, contact Professor Burns at burnsl@wharton.upenn.edu. Lawton R. Burns, "The Medical Device Sector in India". In India's Healthcare Industry: Innovation in Delivery, Financing, and Manufacturing, edited by Lawton R. Burns, (2014) Abstract: To request a copy of this article, contact Professor Burns at burnsl@wharton.upenn.edu. Lawton R. Burns and Ajay Bakshi, "The Medical Profession in India". In India's Healthcare Industry: Innovation in Delivery, Financing, and Manufacturing, edited by Lawton R. Burns, (2014) Abstract: To request a copy of this article, contact Professor Burns at burnsl@wharton.upenn.edu. Lawton R. Burns, "India's Healthcare Industry: A System Perspective". In India's Healthcare Industry: Innovation in Delivery, Financing, and Manufacturing, edited by Lawton R. Burns, (2014) Abstract: To request a copy of this article, contact Professor Burns at burnsl@wharton.upenn.edu. Lawton R. Burns, "India's Healthcare Industry: An Overview of the Value Chain". In India's Healthcare Industry: Innovation in Delivery, Financing, and Manufacturing, edited by Lawton R. Burns, (2014) Abstract: To request a copy of this article, contact Professor Burns at burnsl@wharton.upenn.edu. Lawton R. Burns, Mandar Vayda, Bhuvan Srinivasan, "India's Hospital Sector: The Journey from Public to Private Healthcare Delivery". In India's Healthcare Industry: Innovation in Delivery, Financing, and Manufacturing, edited by Lawton R. Burns, (2014) Abstract: To request a copy of this article, contact Professor Burns at burnsl@wharton.upenn.edu. ## Teaching ## Past Courses ### HCMG101 - HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS This introductory course takes a policy and politics angle to health care's three persistent issues - access, cost and quality. The roles of patients, physicians, hospitals, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies will be established. The interaction between the government and these different groups will also be covered. Current national health care policy initiatives and the interests of class members will steer the specific topics covered in the course. The course aims to provide skills for critical and analytical thought about the U.S. health care system and the people in it. No pass/fail. Grade only. ### HCMG213 - HC MGMT&STRAT This course presents an overview of the business of health and how a variety of health care organizations have gained, sustained, and lost competitive advantage amidst intense competition, widespread regulation, high interdependence, and massive technological, economic, social and political changes. Specifically, we evaluate the challenges facing health care organizations using competitive analysis, identify their past responses, and explore the current strategies they are using to manage these challenges (and emerging ones) more effectively. Students will develop generalized skills in competitive analysis and the ability to apply those skills in the specialized analysis of opportunities in producer (e.g. biopharmaceutical, medical product, information technology), purchaser (e.g. insurance), and provider (e.g. hospitals, nursing homes, physician) organizations and industry sectors. The course is organized around a number of readings, cases, presentations, and a required project. ### HCMG653 - HCMG FIELD APP PROJECT This course focuses on leadership and management issues in health care organizations while providing students with a practice setting to examine and develop their own management skills. Each team acts as a consultant to a local healthcare organization which has submitted a project proposal to the course. The teams define the issue and negotiate a contract with the client organization. By the end of the semester, teams present assessments and recommendations for action to their clients and share their experience with the class in a series of workshops and cross-team consultations. ### HCMG841 - HEALTH SERVICES SYS This course provides an overview of the evolution, structure and current issues in the health care system. It examines the unique features of health care as a product, and the changing relationships between patients, physicians, hospitals, insurers, employers, communities, and government. The course examines three broad segments of the health care industry: payors, providers and suppliers. Within the payor segment, the course examines the sources and destinations of spending, managed care (HMOs, PPOs),employer based health insurance, technology assessment, payor strategy, and efforts to pay for the elderly, the poor & the medically indigent. Within the provider segment, the course examines the impact of cost containment and competition on hospitals and integrated delivery systems, long term care and disease management, and the important role of epidemiology in assessing population health needs and risks. Within the supplier segment, the course will examine developments in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical devices, genomics and IT industries. NOTE: This is a required course for Wharton Graduate Health Care Management majors; it counts as an elective course for all other Wharton Graduate students. It is also open to Law School and Nursing School students with a joint Wharton Program. ### HCMG845 - MANAGED CARE & INTEG HC This course, co-taught with Brad Fluegel, former Senior Vice President and Chief Healthcare Marketing Development officer at Walgreen Co, will focus on two interrelated topics: managed care and market structure. The section on managed care will cover strategic planning and marketing of managed care services, operational issues in developing a managed care network, actuarial issues, and the management of physician behavior. The section on health care market structure will analyze strategies of vertical integration and horizontal integration (M+As), and their attempt to alter the balance of power in local healthcare markets. The section will also analyze the operational issues in managing cost and quality in an integrated system, integration along the supply chain, and the performance of these systems, and the bargaining and negotiation between hospitals, physicians, and health plans. ### HCMG899 - INDEPENDENT STUDY Arranged with members of the Faculty of the Health Care Systems Department. For further information contact the Department office, Room 204, Colonial Penn Center, 3641 Locust Walk, 898-6861. ### HCMG900 - PROSEMINAR IN HE This course is intended to provide entering doctoral students with information on the variety of health economics models, methods, topics, and publication outlets valued and used by faculty in the HCMG doctoral program and outside of it. The course has two main parts: the first, to acquaint students with theoretical modeling tools used frequently by health economists. This part of the course involves a number of lectures coupled with students' presentations from the health economics, management and operations research community at Penn on a research method or strategy they have found helpful and they think is important for all doctoral students to know. ### HCMG902 - INDUSTRIAL ORG OF HC This advanced PhD seminar will explore topics in the industrial organization of health care and structural econometric approaches in health economics. The focus in this course is the development of advanced econometric tools. The (tentative) topics covered include health insurance and hospital demand estimation, the analysis of hospital competition, insurer competition, quality competition, technology adoption, models of entry and exit and dynamic oligopoly games. The readings will focus on recent advances in economics. Students are required to present recent research from the field and write an empirical research paper that broadly based on the topics covered in the course. With the permission of the instructor, the seminar is open to doctoral students from departments other than Health Care Management. ### MGMT773 - MANAGING ORG CHANGE During the last decade it has become clear that in the global economy, firms must constantly adapt to changing technological, competitive, demographic and other environmental conditions in order to survive and prosper. The importance of acquiring the knowledge and tools for changing organizations successfully cannot be overemphasized (particularly for students headed for consulting and general management careers, although not limited to them). This course focuses on specific concepts, theories and tools that can guide executives entrusted with the task of leading organizational change to successful execution. Among other topics, the course will focus on various change strategies such as leading change, managing cultural change, and mergersor acquisitions, corporate transformation, managing growth, building the customer centric organization, business process outsourcing both from client and provider perspectives, and managing radical organizational change. The perspective of the course is integrative and the focus is on successful execution. ### MGMT782 - STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION This course is focuses on strategy in practice, with the objective to explore important strategic topics and tools relevant to managers. We will discuss four broad areas: 1) strategy and business model development for single and multi-business companies, 2) strategic failure and change, 3) analytics and data science in strategic decision making, and 4) corporate ownership and strategy. ### MGMT891 - ADVANCED STUDY-SMGT ## In the News Inside China's Health Care Reform Effort, LDI News - 02/24/2017 Description Inside China's Health Care Reform Effort Wharton Professor's Book Takes a Deep Dive in a Very Complicated Market ## Knowledge @ Wharton Keeping the Lights On: Why Are U.S. Hospitals Closing?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/11/2019Will 'Modicare' Be a Game Changer for India?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 10/08/2018Unlocking Serendipity Is the Key to Life Science Breakthroughs, Knowledge @ Wharton - 04/25/2018The Iron Triangle and China's Health Care Dilemma, Knowledge @ Wharton - 03/16/2017Hospital Consolidation: Can It Work This Time?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 05/11/2015Innovation and the Three "P's": A 360-degree View of Indian Health Care, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/11/2014Health Care in China: Is There a Doctor in the House?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 06/26/2013'Ticking Time Bombs': China's Health Care System Faces Issues of Access, Quality and Cost, Knowledge @ Wharton - 06/26/2013Nurse Practitioners Are In — and Why You May Be Seeing More of Them Knowledge @ Wharton - 02/13/2013'Multi-tasking Writ Large': Is American Health Care Reform a Prescription for Trouble?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/19/2012'Multi-tasking Writ Large': Is Health Care Reform a Prescription for Trouble?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/05/2012China's Health Care System and Reform: Reinforcing the 'Iron Triangle', Knowledge @ Wharton - 09/11/2012Prescription for Global Pharma Firms: Search for More Opportunity in China, Knowledge @ Wharton - 08/01/2012Research Roundup: Cross Subsidization at Hospitals, Building Better Teams and the Alcohol Bias, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/18/2012Medical Devices, Ethics and Money, Knowledge @ Wharton - 06/25/2012Mystery Diagnosis: An Era of Uncertainty for the Health Care Sector, Knowledge @ Wharton - 09/14/2011Compassion vs. Cost: Improving the Prognosis for India's Health Care Sector, Knowledge @ Wharton - 02/11/2010The Road to China: Fresh Insights into the World's Fastest-growing Economy, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/09/2009Information Technology: Not a Cure for the High Cost of Health Care, Knowledge @ Wharton - 06/10/2009Podcast: Lawton Burns on the Critical, and Costly, Role of Companies that Make Healthcare-related Products, Knowledge @ Wharton - 05/17/2006The Business of Healthcare Innovation: How New Products Come to Market, Knowledge @ Wharton - 05/03/2006Why Bush and Kerry are Wrong on Health Care, Knowledge @ Wharton - 10/19/2004Employers Step up Enlistment of Employees in Battle against Health Care Costs, Knowledge @ Wharton - 07/28/2004Can Aventis Fight Off Its Hostile Suitor?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 02/25/2004From Skin Creams to Life Insurance to Medical Care, Biosciences Are the New Frontier of Business Opportunity, Knowledge @ Wharton - 02/27/2002Prescription Drug Coverage for Seniors Faces Uncertain Future, Knowledge @ Wharton - 10/10/2001The Patient Died: A Post-mortem on America's Largest Nonprofit Health Care Failure, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/20/2000Can Opposites Attract?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 08/04/1999 ## Activity ### Latest Research Jeff C. Goldsmith, Lawton R. Burns, Aditi Sen, Trevor Goldsmith Integrated Delivery Networks: In Search of Benefits and Market Effects. All Research ### In the News Keeping the Lights On: Why Are U.S. Hospitals Closing? Many U.S. medical facilities are closing and consolidating as their expenses far outpace revenues. Experts say it's a symptom of the disease plaguing the American health care system. Knowledge @ Wharton - 2019/07/11All News
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Lawton Burns
Career.
Burns received a BA in sociology and anthropology in 1971 from Haverford College. Following this, he received his MA in Sociology in 1976, his PhD in Sociology in 1981 and his MBA in Health Administration in 1984, all three from the University of Chicago. 
 Burns started his academic career at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago, and moved to the College of Business Administration of the University of Arizona. From 1998 to 2002, he was a Visiting scholar in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Since 1994, he has been the chairman of the Health Care Systems Department of Wharton, and since 2008 the James Joo-Jin Kim Professor of Health Care Management. Since 1999 he is also director of the Wharton Center for Health Management and Economics. 
 In 1999, he received an Investigator Award in Health Research Policy from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 
