The Bellin Health study

In its October 2015 issue, the Harvard Business Review published an article “When the Customer is Stressed,” that describes how Bellin Health, a health system located in Green Bay, Wisconsin, learned how to provide more effective high-emotion services for cancer patients.

Dr. Leonard Berry, senior fellow of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and a professor at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, is studying how best to deliver services patients need and want as they move through their cancer journey from diagnosis to recovery or, in some cases, to end-of-life care. Bellin was one of the sites he visited for his research. “They do a fantastic job there,” Dr. Berry told me.

A marketing professor studying service delivery in cancer care—what’s up with that? This is an example of an unusual intersection, something I have written about before. It involves the bringing together of individuals from diverse backgrounds and industries to learn from one another to better solve common problems.

So far, Dr. Berry’s research has included interviews with more than 350 cancer patients, nurses, oncologists, surgeons, staffers, and healthcare organization leaders, mostly at 10 highly ranked cancer centers in the U.S.