Hummy Song Archives

A Second Opinion: Impact of Generative AI on Information Acquisition Processes, Performance, and Service Quality

Since ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022, a surge of studies has underscored generative AI’s potential across a wide range of applications, including improving entrepreneurial performance, spurring innovation, and even providing more ethical advice. Less attention has been garnered about how AI impacts the efficiency of a decision-maker’s information search process. In the context of health care, medical providers review existing patient information (i.e., their medical history) and then must ask a series of questions to the patient or run diagnostic tests to make their diagnosis. While there is inherent uncertainty, the provider faces a trade-off between acquiring additional information from the patient to increase certainty over a diagnosis and…Read More

Multi-Channel Healthcare Operations: The Impact of Video Visits on the Usage of In-Person Care

Healthcare organizations have increasingly adopted video visits as an alternative care channel that offers higher convenience and holds promise for improving patients’ access to care. Despite the growing use, the impact of a new digital channel on care demand within existing physical channels has not been thoroughly investigated, especially in the primary care context of a traditional healthcare organization. We study a large healthcare system that made video visits available to a subset of its patients for primary care needs, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a difference-in-differences approach and visit data spanning over 9.5 million patient-months, we find that the introduction of video visits increases the demand for in-person primary care provider (PCP) visits by 20% and the demand for emergency department (ED) visits by 30%. We also find that patients who have poorer access to in-person care are more likely to initiate care via a video visit rather than an…Read More

Innovating Shift Work Design to Incorporate Heterogeneous Worker Preferences

Shifts are the dominant way to work in many contexts requiring 24/7 coverage, including call centers, police departments, and hospitals. While the detriments of shift work are well-documented both at the individual and organizational levels, its deployment is often unavoidable given round-the-clock staffing needs. We explore a potential organizational lever—incorporating heterogeneous preferences over shift design—to mitigate ramifications of shift work in the context of acute care bedside nurses. Using survey, administrative, and shift data, we examine whether and the extent to which individual choice over dimensions of their shifts mitigates the impact of shift work on work (dis)satisfaction and turnover of nurses.…Read More

Can Patients Differentiate Between Chatbots and Physicians? Using Conversational AI to Facilitate Provider to Patient Messaging

Hummy Song, Operations, Information and Decisions The Wharton School; Christian Terwiesch, Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School; Hessam Bavafa, Wisconsin School of Business; David Asch, Health Care Management, The Wharton School; Xufei Liu, PhD in Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School Abstract: Since ChatGPT was introduced, it has passed…Read More

Behavioral Health Integration in Primary Care

We propose to study the impact of integrating behavioral health (BH) care into primary care practices (e.g., co-location of behavioral health specialists and implementation of patient care teams) on access to behavioral and mental health (MH) services, treatment, appropriate patient evaluation, avoidable hospitalizations, and quality.…Read More

Leapfrogging for Last-Mile Delivery in Health Care

Lowering the cost and increasing the speed of last mile delivery are major challenges for the distribution channels of most industries. These challenges are even more severe in developing countries, where a large part of the population is located in rural areas, and where the lack of physical infrastructure results in a sizable part of the population residing in isolated areas, compromising their access to important services for their investment in human capital, such as timely health care.…Read More

Technological Innovations for Last-Mile Delivery in Health Care

We propose to study the impact of technological innovations in last-mile delivery on health care access, cost, and quality. To this end, we will examine the introduction of drones to deliver blood and other medical supplies to isolated areas in Rwanda.…Read More