We model the contest among full-service advertising agencies as a score auction. The score auction allows the advertiser to select the agency that offers the best combination of creative quality and media cost, and to determine the contract price. To participate in the contest, each agency needs...

This paper uses a quality disclosure policy, the Nursing Home Quality Initiative, which mandates the public reporting of quality information on selected dimensions, to investigate how nonprofit nursing homes react to economic incentives. I find that nonprofits are as responsive as for-profits to...

We consider the work flow in a medical teaching facility, examining the process that involves an initial patient exam by a resident physician, a subsequent conference between the resident and the attending physician, and the attending physician’s visit with the patient. We create an analytical...

Despite heated debate about the pros and cons of online physician ratings, very little systematic work examines the correlation between physicians’ online ratings and their actual medical performance. Using patients' ratings of physicians at the RateMDs website and the Florida Hospital...

Many patients have a choice of a provider for acute care, typically choosing between an Urgent Care facility (UC) or an Emergency Department of a hospital (ED). This choice is made by a patient who is generally not herself a trained medical professional. She is strategic but imperfectly informed...

Competition plays an ambiguous role in nursing home markets where public and private payers coexist. Using U.S. nursing home data with a wide range of market structures, we find a U-shaped relationship between competition and service quality when nursing homes serve a mix of public and private...

Over the past ten years, many healthcare organizations have made significant investments in automating their clinical operations, mostly through the introduction of advanced information systems. Yet the impact of these investments on staffing is still not well understood. In this paper, we study...