The University of Southern California is one of the world’s premier teaching and research universities and the oldest private research university in the West. USC’s main campus, located in University Park, lies at the center of one of the world’s largest and most diverse cosmopolitan regions. There are 225 hospitals and clinics that the support the 20 million people living in Southern California, 111 health insurance plans doing business in California, and 900 advanced medical technology companies in Southern California. USC owns two hospitals (USC University Hospital and Norris Cancer Center) and the Doheny Eye Institute, has the highly ranked Keck School of Medicine, and staffs LA County +USC Medical Center and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Our healthcare system is undergoing profound change unlike any experienced before. Access, quality, and cost of healthcare are critical issues that affect all citizens, residents, and communities. Healthcare and the healthcare industry – which account for more than 16 percent of the entire US economy – involve complex and fast-moving developments in technology, economics, ethics finance, policy and management. California is leading the nation in these changes, and USC faculty are actively engaged in assisting health facilities transition from fee-for-services to managed care facilities.