Healthcare management through organizational simulation

Quality, affordable healthcare remains a contentious, complex and urgent societal problem. Given the scale and complexity of healthcare, systemic changes addressing emergent cost escalation and quality deficiencies are difficult to study, evaluate, and implement. In particular, it is difficult to em...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Decision Support Systems 2013-05, Vol.55 (2), p.552-563
Main Authors: Basole, Rahul C., Bodner, Douglas A., Rouse, William B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Advisors
Decision support systems
Decision-making
Games
Health
Health Advisor
Health care
Health care expenditures
Health care management
Healthcare management
Information complexity
Information science
Management
Online entertainment
Organizational simulation
Perception
Quality of care
Serious games
Simulation
Studies
Tradeoffs
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Summary:Quality, affordable healthcare remains a contentious, complex and urgent societal problem. Given the scale and complexity of healthcare, systemic changes addressing emergent cost escalation and quality deficiencies are difficult to study, evaluate, and implement. In particular, it is difficult to empirically study alternative means of delivery that do not yet exist. To enable the study of such issues, we designed and developed Health Advisor, a web-based game using organizational simulation. Players are tasked to manage people through the healthcare system by making various information, cost, and quality of care trade-offs with score based on health outcomes and costs incurred. This paper reports on a series of evaluations of Health Advisor and the insights gained from these studies. In particular, results show that people's perceptions of the usability and usefulness of information sources have a strong impact on the use of these sources, and a significant impact on their subsequent performance in diagnoses and referrals.
ISSN:0167-9236
1873-5797
DOI:10.1016/j.dss.2012.10.012