Midwest Healthcare Workshop

August 17, 2023

Co-sponsored by Gies College of Business

& Carle Illinois College of Medicine

Theme of the Workshop - Learnings from COVID-19 and Managing Healthcare beyond COVID with Special Focus towards Social Healthcare Delivery to Underserved Communities.

Download booklet of the workshop

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Venue: Chancellor Ballroom, i-Hotel, Champaign, IL. https://stayatthei.com/stay/

Link to last year’s workshop webpage: https://giesbusiness.illinois.edu/upcoming/midwest-healthcare-management-conference

Conference Attendance Registration Form:

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Background – This is the third installment of the healthcare conference series we organize with support from Carle Illinois College of Medicine, and the Gies College of Business at UIUC. In the last (second) installment, we focused on the social delivery of healthcare using technological means. The second mid-west healthcare conference was held in August 2022 and was attended by industry experts, academicians from the process and clinical side, and students. The conference provided us with several leads that have resulted in fruitful engagement with OSF, Claro Healthcare, Christie Clinic, SHIELD Illinois, and others on several research projects. We have submitted two rounds of research proposals to OSF Jump Arches for funding opportunities on social healthcare delivery and fairness in healthcare decision-making. We have received funding from OSF to conduct field experiments to evaluate the efficacy of rural health kiosks towards improving assess and awareness of healthcare among the underserved populations. We have completed several research projects with SHIELD Illinois, and we have published several papers in leading journals, and a few others are in progress. We were recently invited by SHIELD Illinois to present insights from our work at the SHIELD Illinois Annual Conference in Chicago held 30-31 of March 2023. We have submitted fresh research proposal to SHIELD Illinois for funding/sponsoring the next round of work on understanding behavioral patterns in epidemic dynamics and implementation of mitigative measures and policies. We believe that we are in an opportune moment to learn from the COVID-19 pandemic and shape the future forms of healthcare systems grounded in the collective experience of going through a pandemic. For this reason, we have chosen the theme of this year’s workshop as: Learning from COVID-19 and Managing Healthcare Beyond COVID with special focus towards social healthcare delivery to underserved communities. We conduct the workshop on August 17, 2023.

Subthemes for the Workshop:

Reimagining public health by strengthening primary healthcare and community-based health systems while addressing social determinants of health that contribute to health inequities. For example, implementing community health worker programs to increase access to healthcare services for underserved populations.
Leveraging digital technologies and data to improve health outcomes and health equity. For instance, using telemedicine to reach rural and underserved communities, thereby increasing access to healthcare services, and employing big data analytics to identify and address healthcare disparities.
Crowdsourcing healthcare by engaging communities to promote health literacy and health equity. Moreover, crowdsourcing healthcare data could lead to fast-track algorithmic innovation.
Examining healthcare supply chains in a post-covid world to improve their resilience and responsiveness. For instance, analyzing the vaccination process to identify bottlenecks in supply chain, and developing strategies to secure essential medical supplies to be better prepared for future crises.

Progress from Last Year’s Workshop

We have made significant progress from the leads generated from the last year’s workshop. Below is a summary of the progress.

Work with OSF and funding opportunities: Last year we had invited the OSF analytics team to present on the challenges of data analytics in healthcare. Since then, we have progressed significantly in exploring research opportunities with OSF. We have submitted two proposal along with OSF personnel based on the following themes: (i) delivering primary care to rural and underserved communities through Community Health Workers and health kiosks, a field experimental study, and (ii) fairness in treatment and resource allocation for care delivery to diverse communities. We have received funding for ‘delivering primary care to rural and underserved communities through Community Health Workers and health kiosks, a field experimental study’ from OSF, and we are in the process of progressing on the field experiment.
Expansion of our work with SHIELD Illinois: We had interacted several individuals from SHIELD Illinois. As a result, we have been able to expand our network with SHIELD Illinois and we were invited at SHIELD Illinois’s Annual Conference in Chicago to present our work. We made two presentations and have been able to expand the network to IDPH Springfield and Champaign. We have submitted proposal for further support of our research with SHIELD Illinois.
Network with Industry. We have developed a close relationship with Claro Healthcare for exploring research opportunities and teaching cases. Recently we have concluded a teaching simulation exercise with our students in undergraduate analytics class. Also, we are writing a teaching several teaching case studies.

Summary Plan - This workshop will feature presentations from practitioners, healthcare researchers, and policymakers. COVID-19 has been a challenging time for the society as a whole; however, the pandemic had been especially challenging for healthcare management and delivery to the broader communities, particularly to the vulnerable communities. With the prevalence of widespread herd immunity and vaccinations, the COVID-19 pandemic is gradually transforming into an endemic disease. Therefore, it is an appropriate time to look back in our rearview mirror and think collectively about what we have learned from the management of COVID-19 crisis that can be applied to future pandemics. Furthermore, we should look to the management of broader healthcare delivery beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, including how to manage healthcare delivery efficiently and effectively for diverse communities. Some of the lessons that COVID-19 provided us include:

Behavioral considerations are important in prediction and policy implementation for managing an emerging pandemic. Containment efforts were impeded by the diverse human behaviors that ranged from complete panic to utmost negligence toward preventative measures.
Policies that consider behavior and can moderate behavior are important in effective containment efforts.
Reactive policies are sub-optimal. Rather a data-driven objective and proactive policies are warranted in mitigating healthcare shocks such as COVID.
National and global cooperation and coordination efforts are essential in the identification and management of emerging variants of concerns. In future, the global preparedness for detection and identification of emerging variants through proactive testing such as waste water testing is going to be important for managing potential healthcare disasters.
Long-term orientation in data and information sharing coupled with an infrastructure of cooperation can help in managing future pandemics.
COVID-19 has demonstrated the central importance of connecting remote areas via physical (infrastructural), virtual (telemedicine) and personnel (CHWs) means. The right combination of these different modalities of healthcare delivery and community engagements can be of immense value in preventing the loss of human life from pandemics as well as the broader healthcare context.
Managing disparity in healthcare outcomes, such as spatial variation in mortality during COVID-19, will be an important focus for the future. During COVID-19, communities that are characterized by higher levels of social, demographic, and economic risk factors (social vulnerability measures) witnessed relatively higher levels of hospitalization and mortality. In the future, ensuring equality and equity is going to be very important
Finally, managing healthcare demand with resource and personnel constraints through the supply chain, inventory, and skill management is important in managing the demands for future healthcare.

Agenda of the Conference (Tentative – will be updated)

Date: August 17, 2023

Venue: Chancellor Ballroom, i-Hotel, Champaign, IL.

8.00 AM - 8.30 AM: Breakfast and Registration

8.30 AM - 9.00 AM: Inauguration

Ujjal Mukherjee, Gies College of Business, University of Illinois
Dean — Gies College of Business, University of Illinois
Dean — Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois & Carle Health

9.00 AM - 10.15 AM: Managing a pandemic to reduce societal cost

Anita Carson, Questrom School of Business, Boston University and Minje Park, Columbia Business School: “Stockpiling at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Empirical Analysis of National Prescription Drug Sales and Prices.”
Sebastian Souyris, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: “Managing in-person operations in educational institutions during the pandemic: The pivotal role of testing (Opt-in/Opt-out).”
Ian Larkin, Anderson School of Management, UCLA: “COVID vaccine mandates and nursing homes safety.”

10.15 - 10.30 AM: Break

10.30 AM - 12.00 PM: Role of data analytics in healthcare

Selva Nadarajah, University of Illinois Chicago: “Pathways to NetZero in Healthcare: A Goal-Oriented Valuation Perspective”
Pengyi Shi, Purdue University: “Delta Coverage: The Analytics Journey to Implement a Novel Nurse Deployment Solution”
Sandeep Rath, Kenan Flagler Business School at UNC: “Data-Driven Surgical Tray Optimization to Improve Operating Room Efficiency”
Mili Mehrotra and Xueze Song, University of Illinois: “Analysis of Compensation Contracts for Providers in Clinical Studies”

12.00 - 12.30 PM: Lunch

12.30 PM - 1.15 PM: Competition Award Ceremony and Presentations

First Prize: TBD
Second Price: TBD
Third Prize: TBD

1.15 PM - 2.30 PM: Addressing Challenges in Food and Health Safety

Iva Rashkova, Washington University in St Louis: “Budget Allocations for Public Health Procurement”
Yi Tang, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: “Designing a Mental Health Service Recommender System: Sensing and Responding to the Personalized Support Needs and Advancing Equity in Mental Healthcare Delivery.”
Bhupinder Juneja, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota: “Enabling the last-mile administration of vaccines, equitably: a county-level analysis.”

2.30 PM - 3.15 PM: Keynote Address

Sameer Vohra and Arti Barnes, Illinois Department of Public Health: “Dollars and Disease: The Business Argument for Investing in Public Health.”

3.15 PM - 3.30 PM: Break

Andy Allison, Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services: “Mainstreaming analytics in Illinois Medicaid”
Roopa Foulger, OSF Healthcare: “Unveiling the Data Potential: Personalized and Compassionate care in a Diverse Post-Pandemic World”
James Parker, Office of Medicaid Innovation: “Opportunities in Medicaid”
Rajesh Rangaswamy, Accenture: “Supply Chain Resiliency for Healthcare”

5.00 PM - 5.15 PM: Break

5.15 PM - 6.30 PM: Panel Discussion on Healthcare Research of Future

Sridhar Seshadri (Moderator), Gies College of Business, University of Illinois
Kingshuk K. Sinha, Carson School of Management, University of Minnesota
J. George Shanthikumar, Krannert School of Management, Purdue University
Ron Watkins, University of Illinois, SHIELD Illinois
Lee Kuhn, Claro Healthcare
Rodney Parker, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University
Ian Brooks, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois

6.30 PM - 6.45 PM: Closing Remarks

Amy Wagoner Johnson, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois
Carlos Torelli, Gies College of Business, University of Illinois

7.00 PM - 8.00 PM: Dinner & Networking

For any questions contact Maria Dorofeeva at dorofeev@illinois.edu.

Primary Organizers: Dimitri Sumkin, Ujjal Mukherjee, and Sridhar Seshadri