2015 Informs Annual Meeting

TD42

INFORMS Philadelphia – 2015

TD42 42-Room 102B, CC Patients and Practice: Using the Right Resources to Deliver Care Sponsor: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt/Healthcare Operations Sponsored Session Chair: Jonathan Helm, Indiana University Bloomington, 1309 E. Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN, United States of America, helmj@indiana.edu 1 - An Empirical Study of The Impact of Physician Assistants During Critical Care Consultations Yunchao Xu, New York University, 44W 4th St, 8-152, New York, NY, 10012, United States of America, yxu4@stern.nyu.edu, Carri Chan, Mor Armony Trained with a broad set of clinical skills, physician assistants (PAs) can be cost- effective alternatives to physicians in healthcare systems. However, not much is known on the impact of PAs on patient delivery in certain settings. Using data from a major urban hospital system, we utilize a difference-in-differences approach to explore the effects of introducing PAs into the critical care consultation process. One key finding is the reduction in boarding times due to this intervention. 2 - Missed Opportunities in Preventing Hospital Readmissions: Redesigning Post-discharge Checkup Policie Xiang Liu, University of Michigan, 1205 Beal Ave, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States of America, liuxiang@umich.edu, Jonathan Helm, Ted Skolarus, Michael Hu, Mariel Lavieri Hospital readmissions affect hundreds of thousands of patients, placing a tremendous burden on the healthcare system. Post-discharge checkup can reduce readmissions through early detection of conditions. Our work develops optimal checkup plans to monitor patients following hospital discharge using methods including phone calls and office visits. By analyzing the structure of optimal policies, we develop checkup schedules that mitigate 32% more readmissions. 3 - Incentive-compatible Prehospital Triage in Emergency Medical Services Eric Webb, Graduate Student, Indiana University, 1309 E. 10th Street, Bloomington, IN, 47405, United States of America, ermwebb@indiana.edu, Alex Mills The Emergency Medical Services (EMS) system is designed to handle life- threatening emergencies, but a large and growing number of non-emergency patients seek healthcare through EMS. We evaluate the incentives underlying prehospital triage, where EMS staff are allowed to identify patients that could be safely diverted away from the hospital and toward appropriate care. Continued transition from fee-for-service payments to bundled payments may be necessary for prehospital triage implementation.

3 - Optimal Pricing for a Multinomial Logit Choice Model with Network Effects Chenhao Du, Student, University of Minnesota, 425 13th Ave SE, Apt. 1502, Minneapolis, MN, 55414, United States of America, duxxx181@umn.edu, William Cooper, Zizhuo Wang We consider a seller’s problem of determining revenue-maximizing prices for an assortment of products that exhibit network effects. Customers make purchase decisions according to a modified MNL choice model. We show that the optimal strategy is either to maintain a semblance of balanced sales among all product or to boost the sales of exactly one product. We also show the importance of taking the network effects into consideration. 4 - Pricing Ancillary Service Subscriptions Ruxian Wang, Johns Hopkins University, 100 International Dr, We investigate customer choice behavior in the presence of main products, ancillary services with options of pay-per-use and subscription, as well as the outside option. Analytical results and numerical experiments show that offering service subscriptions may result in “win-win-win”“win-win-lose”“lose-lose-win” and other situations for the firm, competitors and customers in the monopolistic and competitive scenarios. TD44 44-Room 103B, CC Recent Trends in Retailing Sponsor: Revenue Management and Pricing Sponsored Session Chair: Mehmet Sekip Altug, Assistant Professor, George Washington University, Washington, DC, United States of America, maltug@gwu.edu 1 - Analyzing Big-Box Retailer in an Emerging Market Mehmet Gumus, McGill University, 1001 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Canada, mehmet.gumus@mcgill.ca, Aditya Jain, Saibal Ray We consider the impact of the entry of a big-box retailer in a market dominated by small retailers. The small retailers are characterized by local coverage of the market, whereas the big-box retailer provides services valued by customers. Since both types of retailers obtain supplies from a common manufacturer, big-box retailer’s entry affects the supply conditions. Our work thus highlights roles of direct competition as well as indirect supply side effect on small retailers and customers. 2 - Dynamic Pricing with Customer Upgrades Oben Ceryan, Assistant Professor, Drexel University, 3220 Market St., Philadelphia, PA, United States of America, oc43@drexel.edu, Ozge Sahin, Izak Duenyas We study the impact of product upgrades on a firm’s pricing and replenishment policies by considering a multiple period, two-stage model where the firm first sets prices and replenishment levels, and after observing the demand, it decides whether to upgrade any customers to a higher quality product. We characterize the structure of the optimal upgrade, pricing, and replenishment policies and find that offering upgrades assists in preserving the vertical price differentiation of the products. 3 - Return Abuse, Countermeasures, and Privacy Concerns Serkan M. Akturk, PhD Candidate, Texas A&M University, 4217 TAMU Wehner 320 M, College Station, TX, United States of America, makturk@mays.tamu.edu, Michael Ketzenberg This paper analytically investigates return abuse with respect to both fraudulent and opportunistic consumer returns and potential countermeasures to deal with them. The research also shows how those countermeasures impact a retailer’s profitability, demand structure, and policy parameters with respect to price and refund. To some extent, our findings contradict common suggestions in the literature. 4 - Store-clearance or Secondary Markets? Evaluation of Inventory Clearance Opportunities in Retailing Mehmet Sekip Altug, Assistant Professor, George Washington University, Washington, DC, United States of America, maltug@gwu.edu, Garrett Van Ryzin One main assumption in the newsvendor model is that the salvage value is exogenous and retailers can sell their excess stock at this fixed salvage value. However, the salvage value of excess stock is mostly determined endogenously. We compare consolidated secondary markets vs. store clearance with myopic and strategic customers. Baltimore, MD, 21202, United States of America, ruxian.wang@jhu.edu, Maqbool Dada, Ozge Sahin

TD43 43-Room 103A, CC Revenue Management with Consumer Choice Models Sponsor: Revenue Management and Pricing Sponsored Session

Chair: Ruxian Wang, Johns Hopkins University, 100 International Dr, Baltimore, MD, 21202, United States of America, ruxian.wang@jhu.edu 1 - Dynamic Pricing for Mobile Apps Kejia Hu, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2169 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL, United States of America, k-hu@kellogg.northwestern.edu, Chaitanya Bandi, Srikanth Jagabathula Mobile apps is special in the following aspects. It has no inventory constraint, almost zero marginal cost and free version updates. In our research, we will model these features and show the dynamic pricing for mobile apps. 2 - Product Line Design and Pricing under Logit Model Anran Li, Columbia University, 345 Mudd, New York, NY, 10027, United States of America, al2942@columbia.edu, Guillermo Gallego, Jose Beltran We study a firm who wants to design and price a set of products characterized by a number of features where each feature has one or multiple levels. We model consumers’ demand by a feature-level based Logit model and optimize the assortment on the features space. We find a price independent index of each feature level that plays a key role. This makes a greedy algorithm, derived from the K-shortest paths algorithm, able to find an optimal K products’ configuration in polynomial time.

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