News Room

Hospitals can seem like confusing, chaotic places for patients, even when the employees are following well-established protocols and resource management techniques. But there is always room for improvement. That’s the goal behind the research of Hummy Song, Wharton professor of operations, information and decisions, who focuses on improving the performance of health care delivery systems.

In the wake of the two most recent and tragic mass killings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, the news cycle has brought with it no small amount of speculation that mass killings are on the rise and that one attack tends to inspire a copycat. While these assumptions are understandable, the data simply does not support them.

Should hospital advertising be banned? A few policymakers in Washington, D.C., have recently considered such an action based on a long-standing debate on whether it poses the spread of misinformation, and that it is not an effective or responsible use of an already limited healthcare budget. New research in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science studies the impact of a ban on hospital advertising, and whether those fears are justified.