News Room

At a time when healthcare leaders are trying to work out a huge range of issues around preparations for the COVID-19 pandemic, one area of endeavor that is coming into further focus is the operations management field. Operations management professionals work in many industries, focusing on ensuring the orderly and organized functioning of supply management and of operational processes. Their professional association, the Catonsville, Md.-based  Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, or INFORMS, has been active in helping its members who are working in the healthcare industry to help their organizations prepare for what’s coming next.

In states and cities across the U.S., government officials have ordered residents to stay home, shelter in place and otherwise put their familiar routines "on pause" to help quell the spread of COVID-19.  

With President Trump saying he wants “the country opened” by Easter to salvage the U.S. economy, a fierce debate is now raging among policymakers over the necessity of shutting down vast swaths of American society to combat the novel coronavirus.

Even as the Ebola outbreak still raged in West Africa, congressional watchdogs began investigating how well-prepared U.S. airports and airlines were to deal with a rapidly spreading disease.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, MSc, declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, citing “alarming levels of spread and severity” and “the alarming level of inaction.”