Steven Eastaugh was a professor of health economics, finance, and health care management for 37 years at Cornell University and George Washington University. Four thousand health care managers and leaders in the United States and around the world have had their careers shaped in part by Professor Eastaugh. The author of nine books and more than 90 journal articles, Dr. Eastaugh is a nationally acclaimed speaker, consultant and agent of change who has traveled to some 36 countries as part of his health services research. From 2008-2009 Dr. Eastaugh was a health policy advisor to Barack Obama.
Dr. Eastaugh has won numerous awards, including the American College of Healthcare Executives Edgar Hayhow Award for "best health care article of the year." He also won the Marriott Award for Productivity Enhancement in the Service Sector. He has been a forceful advocate for market based health care reform. Dr. Eastaugh was senior staff health economist at the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences. He is on the editorial board of the Journal Of Health Care Finance. Dr. Eastaugh currently is a consultant and speaker based in Washington DC.
Education
Bachelor of Arts (Biochemistry and Economics), Harvard University, 1973
Master of Science (Public Health), Harvard University, 1975
Doctor of Public Health, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 1978
Community Service
Dr. Eastaugh works actively with a number of professional organizations, including the American Public Health Association, the American College of Healthcare Executives, Association of University Programs in Health Administration, and Operations Research Society of America.
Enhancing productivity better balances all factors of service delivery to get the greatest output for the least input effort. The best productivity programs are rapid, large in scale, cost beneficial, and provide benchmarks for assessing future performance. Programs that focus on the activities of individuals ignore the two greatest keys to improvement: work-team organization and acuity-driven workload staffing. Gainsharing incentive compensation plans can foster long term productivity gains.
Do not confuse bad performance with destiny. You can improve your position with the right management and incentives. One must manage risk in today’s rapidly changing marketplace by surveying product, place, price, and promotion. The benefits and costs of both specialization and diversification are surveyed. Increasingly, specialization helps trim expenses and enhances service quality.
Our past solutions are our current problems. The consumer marketplace system encourages demand and diversity, whereas the control system leads to uniformity and possibly rationing. American business is increasingly looking to Europe and Asia for global budget strategies to contain price, quantity, and total expense. Can we continue our tradition of resisting a comprehensive single system, given that it is very expensive and duplicative? Current policy trends point in all different directions like a pile of jackstraws.
Physicians and patients are increasingly dissatisfied with managed care. Some HMOs and PPOs have made the ultimate cost sacrifice by simply closing down. In order to survive, managed care must improve customer relations, trim paperwork, develop new service-lines, and utilize life-cycle costing. Employers and the public want their healthcare to offer a delicate balance as a social good and a consumer good.