HPA 420, Evaluation of Team Projects
Here are my comments on each of the team presentations, grades, and some additional statistics from the audience feedback forms and the team E-mails. I will be posting individual grades separately. Your personal grade for the team project may not match the team grade. If that is the case, then your attendance at team meetings, my own observations, and your team members’ assessment of your contributions indicated that your individual performance was noticeably superior/inferior to the team’s as a whole.
Team 1, Boston (Grade = A)
Strengths
I liked how you focused attention on a few aspects of government activity, and provided good details about those. You also focused your discussion of providers on the emergence of the four large systems. You seemed to have the "inside" story on several of the health plans, apparently taken from the newspaper stories in your bibliography, which added depth and interest to the presentation. Given the experience and withdrawals of other plans in the market, your decision to evaluate the profitability of entering the private/commercial market seemed wise. And your decision to reject that approach seemed well justified.
Weaknesses
A couple of your team members read their remarks and did not establish meaningful contact with the audience. It would have been much more effective to present the demographic/background data itself on your slides, so we could look at the numbers, rather than say the numbers and let us look at the topics.
Team 2, Newark (Grade = B+)
Strengths
I really liked the one slide that showed the consolidation of the hospitals by listing the systems and their members in one place. Other information about hospitals was also well organized and detailed. I liked your analytic approach to each area ("What would be good for our plan here?"), but I don't think you explained what you were doing very clearly to the audience (especially in the first section on demographics). Good background information on government's effect on market, beyond Medicare and Medicaid.
Weaknesses
I was really confused by the first set of demographic slides, because the headings (educated population, high income, health population) were contradicted by the statistics that were shown. One of your slides about employers listed NCQA/HEDIS and State Insurance Department Plans, but I don't think you ever explained about that. Nor did you explain HCRA. Your concern about the relatively low numbers of physicians in the inner city areas seemed a little off the mark, because your plan might not want to attract many customers in those areas (for all of the reasons you explained in discussing Newark's demographics). Unless you were going after Medicaid business, the people in the inner city might not be paying customers or very healthy. I don't think you gave particularly convincing arguments against pursuing Medicaid or Medicare as an entry strategy. Your bibliography didn't have many recent newspaper stories or other sources to tell you about the latest events in the market, although you did a good job of covering the HIP debacle. I don't think it worked very well to "make a recommendation" based on information about one stakeholder group. I like the idea of summing up after each section, but "making a recommendation" bothered me. You can say that the information related to each stakeholder group argues for or against entering a market, but your bosses would only be looking for ONE recommendation. And that final recommendation should trade off "pros" involving one aspect of the market against "cons" involving other aspects of the market.
Team 3, Miami (Grade = A)
Strengths
I really liked the slide with "key factors shaping the market" that you used at the start of your talk. That was only one example of how you often called attention to important general patterns or conclusions and then supported these statements with specific details. This really helps an audience to know what you think is important and was very effective in painting a clear picture of the market. Your description of the market was very detailed and complete, even though your team was so small.
Weaknesses
You might have said a little more along the way about features of the market that would enter into your final recommendation, instead of holding almost all of that commentary for the end.
Team 4, Orange Co. (Grade =A- )
Strengths
Nice dissolves and transitions on slides. Chart comparing plans in terms of enrollment in different products was effective in giving a "bird's eye view" of the market. Good discussion as you went along of significance of hospital characteristics with respect to entry recommendation. I liked the way you generalized across plans, across hospitals, across physicians—instead of just describing each of the individual organizations. Good appreciation of risk-sharing with physicians. Details about Senate Bill 21 were helpful and quite relevant.
Weaknesses
The opening commentary didn't quite match the slides that were shown. The overview was too long to be a "brief overview." As I say to Team 2 above, I don't think it worked very well to "make a recommendation" based on information about one stakeholder group. I like the idea of summing up after each section, but "making a recommendation" bothered me. You can say that the information related to a stakeholder group argues for or against entering a market, but your bosses would only be looking for ONE recommendation. And that final recommendation should trade off "pros" involving one aspect of the market against "cons" involving another aspect of the market. You didn't have a summary slide about your recommendation, although you did put the chart on the board, and you didn't make very much of your recommendation. Your presentation just ended, without reviewing the reasons for your recommendation.
Team 5, Phoenix (Grade = A)
Strengths
I enjoyed the creativity and humor of your plan name and slogan, and your fictitious operations in other western cities. Previewing your recommendation was very helpful in clueing in the audience to where you were heading. Nice icons on the slides. Excellent distillation and summary of important stakeholders in the market. The information about AHCCS showed that your research was thorough and up to date. Your bibliography is probably richer than any other team's. It contains lots of newspaper reports, journal articles, and other material that goes well beyond obvious web sites (URLs for the plans or URLs that I gave you). Your plans to make a "staged" entry into the market were quite thoughtful.
Weaknesses
I didn't understand why you bothered to characterize hospitals as "owned, leased or sponsored" vs. "contract managed." Knowing that most physician practice management corporations have failed, and that PPMC's are no longer in vogue, I wondered if you were out of date in reporting that "physician management companies are buying up practices." I believe the term you wanted was competitive bidding process, not price.
Team 6, Pennsylvania (Grade = B)
Strengths
You gathered lots of detailed information about the state, emphasized what I would agree are some of the most important features of the Pennsylvania landscape, and gave convincing reasons to stay out of Pennsylvania.
Weaknesses
The obvious challenge that you had to overcome in designing and preparing your talk was to organize and summarize all of the information that you collected about the different parts of Pennsylvania. Covering exactly the same points about six different regions got tedious. I think you would helped your audience to take away a richer and better understanding of Pennsylvania's markets by deciding on a few key points that warranted attention for each of the regions--and then marshalling the evidence to demonstrate or illustrate those points. Also, you might have compared and contrasted the regions more effectively by covering some of the topics (Medicare enrollment in managed care and Medicare HMO rates, for example, for all of the regions at once). I would have liked you to move quickly past some of the smaller regions, so that you could spend more time on Pittsburgh and Philadelphia (where the people and the money are, and where there are some interesting stories to tell). Also, it would have been helpful to show which option you were recommending on your "enter or not enter" slides. And to have explained (in a few words) on those slides why and how the things you listed were relevant to your recommendation.
Audience Evaluation and Team Process
The team grades are based on Jen's and my assessment of your presentation, not on the audience evaluations. However, I thought there were many appropriate comments and suggestions on the audience forms. Here are the ratings for all of the team's so that you can see how your team compared.
I am disappointed that the team didn't generally make use of E-mail to distribute agendas for and notes from each meeting. I think you'll find that many "real world" teams find that this is a very helpful practice.
Team 1 / Team 2 / Team 3 / Team 4 / Team 5 / Team 6Boston / Newark / Miami / Orange Co. / Phoenix / Pennsylvania
S / OK / W / S / OK / W / S / OK / W / S / OK / W / S / OK / W / S / OK / W
Audience Evaluations
Logical structure / 16 / 4 / 0 / 15 / 2 / 1 / 11 / 2 / 2 / 7 / 4 / 0 / 10 / 5 / 0 / 17 / 2 / 0
Clear recommendation / 16 / 3 / 1 / 17 / 1 / 0 / 12 / 1 / 2 / 7 / 4 / 0 / 14 / 1 / 0 / 15 / 4 / 0
Choice of content / 17 / 2 / 2 / 14 / 3 / 1 / 11 / 3 / 1 / 9 / 2 / 0 / 13 / 2 / 0 / 18 / 1 / 0
Overheads / 15 / 3 / 2 / 14 / 4 / 0 / 4 / 11 / 0 / 9 / 2 / 0 / 13 / 2 / 0 / 10 / 9 / 0
Picture of market / 16 / 4 / 0 / 17 / 1 / 0 / 11 / 3 / 1 / 6 / 5 / 0 / 12 / 3 / 0 / 18 / 1 / 0
Strategies / 16 / 4 / 0 / 13 / 5 / 0 / 7 / 6 / 2 / 7 / 3 / 1 / 14 / 0 / 1 / 15 / 2 / 2
Good arguments / 18 / 2 / 0 / 16 / 1 / 1 / 11 / 2 / 2 / 9 / 2 / 0 / 11 / 4 / 0 / 14 / 4 / 1
TOTAL # each rating / 114 / 22 / 5 / 106 / 17 / 3 / 67 / 28 / 10 / 54 / 22 / 1 / 87 / 17 / 1 / 107 / 23 / 3
% rated strength / 81% / 84% / 64% / 70% / 83% / 80%
Communication and Preparation
Number of E-mails exchanged / 9 / 6 / 8 / 12 / 5 / 3