Time and effort in coordinating care for patients with complex medical and social needs: Lessons from a community-based intervention
Presented by Hari Balasubramanian, PhD
Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Patients with significant medical, behavioral health and social challenges often experience extreme patterns of healthcare utilization and costs. Holistic, person-centered care interventions, often led by a multidisciplinary team consisting of nurses, community health workers, and social workers, have emerged as a strategy to improve the health and wellbeing of such patients. In this talk, Hari uses a detailed dataset from Camden, New Jersey to analyze operational aspects of such interventions related to care team effort and patient outcomes.
About the presenter
Dr. Hari Balasubramanian is an Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He received his doctoral degree at Arizona State University in 2006. After graduation, Dr. Balasubramanian spent two years as a Research Associate at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota before joining the University of Massachusetts in 2008. His research utilizes methods in optimization, simulation, stochastic modeling, and statistical learning to improve healthcare delivery. Past projects have included capacity planning and scheduling in outpatient, inpatient, and emergency care settings to reduce patient delays. His recent work is on detecting population-level patterns in the prevalence of multiple chronic conditions and evaluating interventions for such patients. Dr. Balasubramanian’s research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, including an NSF CAREER award (2013-2019) focused on improving primary care delivery. His papers have been published in engineering as well as clinical journals.
