Stephen Parente, PhD, Health Care Economist, Finance Professor, & Research Investigator

The Risky Health Care Business

What he does: Dr. Parente is a health care economist, Professor in the Department of Finance and the Minnesota Insurance Industry Chair of Health Finance in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, as well as Associate Dean of the Global Institute. As a finance professor, he specializes in health economics, information technology, and health insurance. He has been the principal investigator on large government and foundation funded studies regarding consumer-directed health plans, health information technology, and health policy micro-simulation.

On risk: "There's uncertainty in everything that we do. But in health care there's even more uncertainty. And when I look at risk from an economist standpoint, I can't go very far without thinking about risk aversion, meaning that different people have different risk tolerances … The way I look at risk is that if you're trying to mitigate it, you're trying to buy it off, you're trying to buy off the risk factors … Providers are at enormous risk - malpractice issues, quality issues, negligence, dissatisfied patients, legal concerns, not enough staffing, cost of operation and doing business"

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