The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted existing issues with the US healthcare system and changed how many experts think about those issues. Exorbitant costs, telehealth capacities, discrepancies in care access, and supply chain interruptions were all exacerbated by the strain of a global health event, sparking new and renewed conversations about how to create a high-quality, equitable medical structure that can withstand such challenges.
Answering these new and vital questions is why Kogod professor of information technology and analytics Ozden Engin Cakici enjoys his work so much. A specialist in operations management focusing on healthcare systems, Professor Cakici has kept a close eye on how organizations and industries responded to the pandemic and how they can continue to improve.
“My research stems from following what is changing how healthcare institutions do business,” he explained. “For instance, the pandemic has had a huge impact on the supply chains of items such as medical equipment and pharmaceuticals, and telehealth services have skyrocketed. All of these questions are brand new, and I discuss them with my students in the classroom.”
Cakici pulls his perspectives on healthcare from a broad range of academic fields. After completing a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and a master’s in management science, he developed an understanding of how to manage an organization's financial aspects and optimize its systems. From there, he went to New York’s University of Rochester to earn a PhD in operations management.
“I wanted to pursue that PhD because I enjoy improving any system,” he said. “The study of operations management aims to answer fundamental questions about how systems work and how we can improve them.”
In healthcare, operations research explores relationships, processes, and incentives. A doctor-patient interaction can make or break the success of the healthcare service. These relationships become even more complicated when you add insurance providers, medical equipment suppliers, and government agencies. In the US, in particular, many healthcare providers and patients consider bureaucracy and tense conversations part of the medical process. Cakici notes that providers often don’t consider the managerial aspects of medicine.
“The biggest problem is incentive alignment,” he said. “When it comes to operational issues such as demand management or costs, as long as the healthcare provider gets the demand and gets paid by the insurance company, they often don’t get into the specifics of healthcare operations because they don’t need to.”
This is where operations management comes in. Cakici describes the field as combining the systems analysis of industrial engineering with the management study of a business school—a perfect fit for him, with his background in both areas. His research involves speaking with experts in the medical field to identify problems, then analyzing those problems to figure out where they come from and what about the current system needs to change to fix them. “As a researcher, I learn a lot from medical personnel since they’re the only ones who can explain how their processes work,” he explained.