Op-ed: Let hospitals, not politicians, triage care during the latest COVID-19 surge
Op-ed: Let hospitals, not politicians, triage care during the latest COVID-19 surge
The INFORMS Analytics+ Conference showcased how companies are turning advanced analytics and AI into measurable operational results
In most emergency departments, beds are a hot commodity. But some patients don’t actually need a bed for their treatment – and accurately identifying those people is a low-lift but effective way to increase efficiency without sacrificing care quality, finds a study recently published in the journal Management Science.
The researchers developed a simple decision tree, informed by mathematical and machine learning models, to help staff decide whether a patient truly needs a bed or can be routed to a “vertical processing pathway” – that is, an area where they can be treated sitting up. Many hospitals already have such an area but don’t necessarily have a systematic way to decide which patients are treated there.
American teenagers start their school day too early.
Medical experts have been clear for years: sleep cycle changes during puberty make it hard for teenagers to learn in the early morning. Later school start times have been linked to better sleep, improved mental health, stronger academic performance and even safer driving.
Most school district leaders know about this problem and care about fixing it. But changing the schedule can feel operationally impossible.
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Op-ed: Let hospitals, not politicians, triage care during the latest COVID-19 surge
The doctor-patient relationship starts at birth and extends across one's life. When patients are honest with their doctors, better decisions can be made about their health. They expect the same honesty in return and, indeed, the Hippocratic Oath demands as much of physicians. Underscoring this important responsibility, throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, national polls have found that most Americans trust medical professionals to give them accurate information about the virus.
President Biden’s plan to make 500 million at-home test kits available at no cost later this month sounds great — but does not go far enough. Moreover, widespread use of at-home tests requires a shift in how to track the virus and its impact on communities.
That’s been the cry of the food industry, if not the nation and world as a whole, during the pandemic. Now, as Covid stubbornly lingers, that cry has shifted to a new set of problems with the supply chain, labor and inflation.
A new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign identifies the optimal conditions to reduce the risk of COVID transmission on airplanes.

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