A New Lens.

Mariam Fofana, M.D. 

Resident in Emergency Medicine

Brigham and Women's Hospital/Massachusetts General Hospital 

PGY 4

06/08/2021

I came to the VBHD course as a skeptic. I consider health to be a public good and was wary of treating it as a business/industry like any other. Although the course takes a business school approach to examining specific healthcare delivery models, I very much appreciated the focus on value for patients. The concept of value as articulated in the course was new to me and I found it very helpful in framing the challenges encountered by healthcare systems and developing solutions. 

It is also very helpful to understand how to speak the language of business to convey ideas to certain stakeholders such as executives and funders. My primary career interest is in research and I don’t necessarily anticipate being involved in major healthcare transformation efforts, but I also have a significant interest in global health, and thinking about value as part of outcome assessment of interventions could help make healthcare more accessible and more equitable. The course has given me a new lens through which to consider how we deliver care and will likely prompt me to be more critical of some of the practices that we take for granted, or the systems that we think immutable.