Projects: Healthcare Management Analytics Lab

Referrals represent a significant driver of new patients at University of Chicago Medicine (UCM) hospitals. While these patients bring additional revenue to the hospital, inpatient beds represent a scarce and valuable resource. As such, UCM must determine whether to accept or deny each non-EMTALA referral request from neighboring hospitals based on a number of complicating factors, including the medical needs of the patient and the availability of resources to serve the patient, while also taking into account the patient’s insurance coverage. This project will explore the long-term effects of denying referrals from select neighboring hospitals, and provide a framework for optimizing the mix of accepted referrals to meet the hospital’s social and financial objectives in light of its regulatory obligations. Does UCM lose goodwill and sacrifice future demand from its referring hospitals by denying too many requests? Students will gain hands-on experience working with electronic medical data sourced from multiple databases. The results will then be analyzed using a modern optimization model for goodwill management. Goodwill management can be applied to a number of settings both inside and outside of healthcare and represents a major problem for service providers under capacity constraints. Students will learn state-of-the-art techniques to manage goodwill, and investigate management issues that apply broadly to tertiary hospitals around the country.