Is recognised under the ‘Human-Focussed Approach in the Production & Operations Management’ track at POMS India International Conference 2022
28 DECEMBER, 2022: A paper, co-authored by PhD student Subhankar Saha with Prof. Sriram Thirumalai, faculty in the Information Systems and Supply Chain Management Department at Neeley School of Business, TCU, Fort Worth, Texas, and Prof. Sarang Sundar, faculty in the Marketing area at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, wins the Best Paper award at POMS India International Conference 2022, organised by the POMS India Chapter and IIM Kozhikode from 21-23 December 2022.
The paper titled, ‘Patient Insurance Status, Healthcare Procedures, and Patient Outcomes: An Empirical Study of Physician Behavioural Biases’ won the award under the ‘Human-Focussed Approach in the Production & Operations Management’ track at the conference.
The absence of standardised diagnostic and treatment routines across patients, even within the same diagnostic category, has been the bane of efficiency in healthcare. But do healthcare providers’ behavioural biases exacerbate this variability? In July 2011, the Affordable Care Act established the Hospital Value-Based Purchase (HVBP) Program in the US to encourage hospitals to improve the quality of care that Medicare beneficiaries receive during inpatient stays. This paper examines the impact of patient insurance on the number of procedures and the subsequent effect on other outcomes after this program’s introduction using the Healthcare Cost & Utilisation Project State Inpatient Database of Florida.
The authors notice that, in general, the providers prescribe significantly more procedures to Medicare patients than to Private patients. Interestingly, implementing the HVBP program leads providers to substantially decrease the number of procedures for Medicare patients compared to Private patients, which features the intended consequences of this federal regulation. Their results confirm the inequity in providing quality care and highlight how this program can reduce this bias by reducing the providers’ incentives.