【Topic】
Contracting Advice and Guidance Service
【Host】
Prof. ZHUANG Weifen, professor of Department of Management Science, School of Management, Xiamen University
【Abstract】
In the UK, general practitioners (GPs) act as the first level of contact for patients to perform initial assessment and treatment. Other than in an emergency, specialist consultations require a referral by GPs. The quality of gatekeeping function is critical for the success of the system. However, the system experiences diagnostic and referral errors and inefficiencies. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the England Health System faces worrying long waiting lists of more than seven million patients for different healthcare services. It is vitally important to reduce unnecessary demand for secondary-care services. To deal with these inefficiencies and the concerns about the sustainability of traditional outpatient services, Advice & Guidance (A&G) service is introduced to perform as an additional and optional gatekeeper before referrals to outpatient appointments. We study different incentive mechanisms to ensure that the A&G service reaches its potential in terms of eliminating inefficiencies. We propose a game-theoretic model to study this new scheme with A&G to evaluate the system performance under different regulations/contracts. We show that the social optimal will not be obtained with no regulation, traditional fee-for-service (FFS) contracts, and waiting-time-target contracts. Furthermore, we propose a group of new coordinating contracts that helps incentivize the commissioner and the hospital to achieve the social optimal with flexibility and robustness. Our research shows that with the hospital's tendency to run A&G slowly when no regulation is employed, due consideration should be given to regulating/contracting the A&G services to maximize its potential in improving the system referral efficiency.
【Speaker】
Houyuan Jiang
(Professor of Management Science at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge)
Houyuan Jiang is an honorary non-medical consultant of NHS and OHID of DHSC. He teaches courses related to quantitative techniques, business analytics, mathematical modelling, and operations management. His current research interests include healthcare, supply chain management and revenue management, for which he builds mathematical models, uncovers managerial insights, and develops computational methods. Previously, Prof. Jiang was a Senior Research Scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organizations (CSIRO) in Australia, where he undertook research in combinatorial optimization and consultancy in applied operations research and management science. He is a member of the Institute of Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS). He has published in Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, and a number of leading optimization journals. He has been or was an editorial board member of Computational Management Science, International Journal of Revenue Management, Numerical Algebra, Control and Optimization, Operations Research Letters, and Production and Operations Management.
