Kaveh Safavi, M.D., J.D., is a senior managing director at Accenture where he is responsible for leading, developing and driving a growth strategy that differentiates Accenture’s offerings for providers, health insurers, and public and private health systems across the globe.
A seasoned executive, Dr. Safavi brings more than three decades of leadership experience to Accenture Health. Prior to joining Accenture in 2011, Dr. Safavi led Cisco’s global healthcare practice. Before that he was chief medical officer of Thompson Reuters’ health businesses, vice president of medical affairs at United Healthcare, and had leadership roles at HealthSpring and Humana. Among his many accomplishments was establishing one of the Midwest’s first electronic-health-record-enabled primary care practices.
Dr. Safavi has published numerous papers and is often quoted on healthcare issues in various media publications, including The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, The New York Times, Consumer Reports, US News and World Report, Harvard Business Review and The Economist. Recently, IT Services Report named him the #1 healthcare IT executive for 2020.
Dr. Safavi earned an M.D. from Loyola University School of Medicine and a J.D. from DePaul University College of Law. He is board-certified in internal medicine and pediatrics and completed his medical residency at the University of Michigan Medical Center. He serves on the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences’ Board of Visitors–Northwestern University, is a frequent guest scholar at the Stanford University Clinical Excellence Research Center and serves on the advisory committee of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.
Healthcare companies often consider growth opportunities outside the country where the business was started. Unlike many industries that offer a global marketplace for one good or service produced in one country, yet consumed in many; healthcare is a multidomestic marketplace. Countries have similar attributes across healthcare systems, but offer discreet marketplaces that require a deep understanding of the local healthcare system and the product-to-market fit opportunity. While this is to some extent true with any product market, the vast differences in the very nature of commerce for healthcare (i.e. who is the customer, how are product decisions made, who can enter or exit the market, the deeply personal nature of the product and its interaction with cultural norms) makes it imperative that firms deeply understand how value is created and captured in each market.
The final deliverable for the course will be for groups of students to each pick one country for study with a maximum of 2 students picking the same country. The goal is not to cover every country but rather to limit the analysis to countries where market expansion is conceivable. The students will then have to assess whether this setting is appropriate for the expansion of the US-based healthcare service. This will require the students to judiciously apply their learnings from the course.A basic understanding of the health care industry is suggested but not required. Please note: STRT-443 Healthcare Strategy OR STRT-444 Healthcare Economics are STRONGLY recommended prerequisites for the class .
Healthcare Deep Dive StudentsPlease note that students cannot be enrolled in classes that overlap time. If you are accepted into a Deep Dive course, you will need to drop any conflicting course secured through the bidding process or otherwise. This applies to all time conflicts, even if the time conflict only occurs on 1 or 2 occasions.
