Informs 2015

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INFORMS Philadelphia – 2015
360
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,
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, ,
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,
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,
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.
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,
1 - Dynamic Pricing for Mobile Apps
Kejia Hu, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern
University, 2169 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL, United States of
America, , 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, ,
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.
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,
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,
Baltimore, MD, 21202, United States of America,
, Maqbool Dada, Ozge Sahin
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,
1 - Analyzing Big-Box Retailer in an Emerging Market
Mehmet Gumus, McGill University, 1001 Sherbrooke Street West,
Montreal, Canada, , 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, ,
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, , 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,
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.
TD42