Executive Director of the Office of Science, Technology & Innovation, North Carolina Department of Commerce
The COVID-19 financial downturn will have short- and long-term effects on personal and consumer finance, as explored by a panel of Kenan Institute-convened experts during a press briefing held yesterday. The full recording of this briefing—along with a deeper-dive analysis on the specific implications of the downturn on personal retirement income by Kenan Institute Executive Director Greg Brown, is available in this week’s Kenan Insight.
About 27% of diabetics also suffer from depression, and the presence of co-morbid depression could increase the cost of care for diabetes by up to 100%. Several randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that physical and mental health are more likely to improve for diabetes patients suffering from depression when regular treatment for depression is provided in a primary care setting (called Collaborative Care). An important operational lever in managing Collaborative Care is the allocation of the care manager's time to enrolled patients based on their requirements, which in turn influences the revenue, costs, and patient health outcomes. We present a mathematical modeling approach that determines the optimal allocation of care manager's time and quantifies the costs and benefits of Collaborative Care.
Healthcare services provided to patients with similar health conditions are known to vary. Standardization of healthcare delivery is a relatively new, yet hotly debated approach to address clinical variations. Previous research on process standardization in health services has focused on measuring adherence to established protocols that are available only for a limited set of disease states. We create an alternate construct that quantifies process standardization measured in terms of consistency of services rendered, and apply it to the healthcare setting using detailed nonpublic inpatient discharge data from about 35 million inpatient stays at 296 acute care hospitals in California between 2008-2016.
Voting outcomes can differ from underlying preferences due to strategic selection into voting. One explanation for such selection effects is lower participation of shareholders with popular preferences (free-rider effect) relative to those with unpopular preferences (underdog effect). We illustrate these effects in a rational choice model in which the voting participation decision depends on the probability of being pivotal and the costs and benefits of voting.
Does the availability of health insurance for young adults affect entrepreneurial behavior? This paper proposes that policy effects may go beyond the binary, and shape choices around entrepreneurial form, such as incorporation. I use the adoption of 38 dependent coverage mandates in 31 states, passed from 1986 to 2013, and the adoption of a federal mandate in 2010 to analyze the relationship between non-employer provided insurance and entrepreneurial activity.
After years of decline, increases in American youth tobacco usage have pushed the tobacco control debate back into the forefront of the public health conversation. Youth tobacco use increased from 2011 to 2018, largely driven by e-cigarette usage, which grew from 1.5% to 20.8% of American high school students, representing an increase of 2.83 million adolescents. Despite extensive evidence that e-cigarette chemicals cause morbidity including immediate, harmful changes in endothelial function in healthy nonsmokers, 72% of teenage e-cigarettes users believe e-cigarettes cause some, little, or no harm.
In Never Stop Learning, behavioral scientist and operations expert Bradley R. Staats describes the principles and practices that comprise dynamic learning and outlines a framework to help you become more effective as a lifelong learner. Replete with the most recent research about how we learn as well as engaging stories that show how real learning happens, Never Stop Learning will become the operating manual for leaders, managers, and anyone who wants to keep thriving in the new world of work.
Academics, politicians, and journalists are often highly critical of U.S. firms for holding too much cash. Cash holdings are stockpiled free-cash flow and incur substantial opportunity costs from the perspectives of economics. However, behavioral theory highlights the benefits of cash holdings as fungible slack resources facilitating adaptive advantages.
The Peak Performance simulation is an experiential learning process designed to help learners and medical professionals develop communication and interpersonal skills that are critical in today’s health care settings. The skills practiced in this simulation have a direct impact on our interactions with patients, how we work with colleagues, and our capacity to lead others.
In 2008, the majority of U.S. airlines began charging for the second checked bag, and then for the first checked bag. One of the often cited reasons for this action by the airlines’ executives was that this would influence customers to travel with less baggage and thus improve cost and operational performance.
Negotiation role-playing simulations are among the most effective and widely used methods for teaching and conducting research on negotiations. Teachers and researchers can either license a published, “off-the-shelf” simulation or write their own custom “bespoke” simulation.
On January 31 and February 1, 2019, the Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise (Kenan Institute) hosted its Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Conference at The Breakers Palm Beach Resort. The conference brought together more than 150 academic research scholars, policy experts and private sector professionals to discuss and debate the most challenging current issues in the field of entrepreneurship in order to set the agenda for future research and policy.
Virginia’s rapid population growth over the past three decades has been uneven, creating demographic winners and losers, and masks several demographic headwinds that will constrain future growth and competitiveness if left unaddressed, including slowing rates of total and foreign-born population growth, white population decline, deaths of despair, and declining labor force participation among prime working age males and females in the state.
Economic theory holds that competition drives innovation, improves the quality of goods and services, and lowers prices for consumers. Health care delivery is no exception.
The healthcare industry experienced massive disruption in 2020 and continues to face unprecedented times. Persistent challenges presented by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have forced organizations to rethink their existing practices as well as how they intend to operate in future. Now more than ever, healthcare leaders need to exercise flexibility and be equipped with the right tools and ideas to lead the next generation of health.
Please join us for an exclusive conversation with Kindbody Founder and CEO Gina Bartasi on Friday, Nov. 5. This virtual fireside chat is part of the Dean’s Speaker Series, hosted by Kenan-Flagler Business School Dean Doug Shackelford. The discussion will be lead by Brad Staats, Associate Dean of MBA Programs, Professor of Operations, Sarah Graham Kenan Scholar & Faculty Director of the Center for the Business of Health.
The health and economic data from this past week brought both good and bad news about the state of affairs in North Carolina. Health data suggest the growth in new cases is slowing, that hospital capacity remains available and that we might be getting a better handle on identification. While this is certainly encouraging in the battle against the pandemic, a similar levelling off in business activity does not bode as well for the economy. In this week’s commentary we seek to unpack some of the details in the data to understand what may be a new plateau.
Health systems have employed online and phone-based triage tools using automated algorithms to quickly determine which COVID-19 patients may need the most attention. Primary care can also be transformed through the broad application of automated algorithms, writes researchers including Bradley Staats, faculty director of the UNC Center for the Business of Health, but this requires building automated clinical processes that are safe and effective.
Kenan Institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen explains the vital importance of productivity to the health of our economy, both domestically and globally, and why that is only one metric of societal health.