Discretionary Task Ordering: Queue Management in Radiological Services

Ibanez, Maria R.; Clark, Jonathan; Huckman, Robert S.; Staats, Bradley R.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2677200

Cited by 20 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…For example, Ibañez et al (2017) find that radiologists are likely to reorganize their queue of work -often to choose the shortest task in their queue or to select a task that is similar to the previously completed task -but that in so doing they meaningfully slow down their performance. We contribute to this line of research by further unpacking the role of discretion in operating systems.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We contribute to this line of research by further unpacking the role of discretion in operating systems. Our work is most similar to Ibañez et al (2017), but whereas they look at how individuals manage an individual queue, we consider how individuals select tasks from a common queue under different workload conditions. In addition, we consider not only the short-term effects of the choice, but also the long-term effects.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When choosing between multiple tasks, individuals may choose the easiest in order to make progress towards their overall goal -finishing the work or at least decreasing the amount of work still to be done. Ibañez et al (2017) show that when radiologists deviate, or change the order of tasks in their queue, one of the reasons they deviate is to switch to the shortest task.…”

Section: Task Selection and Workloadmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Not surprisingly then a large body of scholars has embraced this focus on People Operations. Findings have highlighted the critical role of factors such as learning (Lapré and Nembhard 2010;KC, Staats and Gino 2013), individuals subverting the system through workarounds (Tucker 2007;2015), employee interaction with customers (Buell, Kim and Tsay 2016), and the choice of whether to execute a given task, or not (Freeman, Savva and Scholtes 2016;Ibañez et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent work in People Operations has highlighted that individual discretion -a person's decision about how to alter her work -may have important operational consequences -sometimes leading to improved performance (van Donselaar et al 2010;Campbell and Frei 2011;Kim et al 2015;Phillips, Şimşek and Ryzin 2015) and sometimes leading to worse performance (Ibañez et al 2017). For example, Ibañez et al (2017) find that, on average, individuals choose tasks in a queue that have the shortest completion time and that this changing of the order of tasks leads to slower, overall task completion times. In this paper we build on the operations' work considering the role of discretion, as well as work that suggests that people may exhibit a bias towards completing tasks over choosing the appropriate task (Amabile and Kramer 2011;Amar et al 2011), in order to examine whether individuals alter their task selection when workload increases.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Task Selection and Workload: A Focus on Completing Easy Tasks Hurts Long-Term Performance

Staats

Kouchaki

et al. 2017

SSRN Journal

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How individuals manage, organize, and complete their tasks is central to operations management. Recent research in operations focuses on how under conditions of increasing workload individuals can increase their service time, up to a point, in order to complete work more quickly. As the number of tasks increases, however, workers may also manage their workload by a different process -task selection. Drawing on research on workload, individual discretion, and behavioral decision making we theorize and then test that under conditions of increased workload individuals may choose to complete easier tasks in order to manage their load. We label this behavior Task Completion Bias (TCB). Using two years of data from a hospital emergency department we find support for TCB and also show that it improves shortterm productivity. However, although it improves performance in the short-term we find that an overreliance on this task selection strategy hurts performance -as measured both by speed and revenue -in the long run. We then turn to the lab to replicate conceptually the task selection effect and show that it occurs due to the positive feelings individuals get from task completion. These findings provide an alternative mechanism for the workload-speedup effect from the literature. We also discuss implications for both research and the practice of operations in building systems to help people succeed in both the short and long run.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Task Selection and Workloadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Task Selection and Workload: A Focus on Completing Easy Tasks Hurts Long-Term Performance

Staats

Kouchaki

et al. 2017

SSRN Journal

Self Cite

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Why do surgeons schedule their own surgeries?

Johnston

Diamant

Quereshy

2019

J of Ops Management

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Surgery is a knowledge intensive, high‐risk professional service. Most hospitals give surgeons considerable autonomy in deciding which patients to operate on and when. In theory, this allows surgeons the operational flexibility to prioritize surgeries based on intimate knowledge of their patient's clinical needs. At odds with this strategy is the operations management literature, which favors the standardization and centralization of scheduling focused on achieving the efficient use of all resources, such as operating room capacity. Unfortunately, a little is known as to how surgeons customize their schedules and why they value such control. To this end, we conduct an exploratory qualitative study of the scheduling behavior of surgeons at a large Canadian teaching hospital. We identify significant differences between surgeons as to their priorities when scheduling. Two constructs are formative in surgeon decision‐making: the timeliness of treatment for their patients and idiosyncratic personal priorities. Our work has implications for achieving surgeon support for initiatives to standardize and centralize routines for patient scheduling. Accordingly, we formulate propositions that address the conditions under which such efforts will achieve the desired balance between flexibility and efficiency.

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The value of process friction: The role of justification in reducing medical costs

Jaeker

Tucker

2019

J of Ops Management

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We study the role of process friction in increasing efficiency of service provisions. We examine one potential lever for reducing the provision of discretionary services: “justification”—an otherwise non‐value‐added process step that introduces process friction by forcing workers to explain the rationale for requesting an optional service. We exploit the presence—and absence—of a justification step in the ultrasound (US) ordering process at two emergency departments (EDs). We find that patients with abdominal pain are less than half as likely to receive an US when there is a justification step compared to when there is not. Additionally, we find a spillover effect: other diagnostic tests are also ordered less frequently. The decrease in testing reduces the average length of stay of the patients, and reduces testing costs by more than $200,000, with no decrease in quality. We show that two mechanisms underlie these results: (a) justification reduces clinicians' available time, and (b) justification forces clinicians to reflect on a patient's need for service. Our paper contributes to recent theory on friction and reflection as drivers of efficiency in services. We show that justification can serve as an effective lever for reducing medical tests—and costs—without negatively impacting quality.

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Discretionary Task Ordering: Queue Management in Radiological Services

Cited by 20 publications

References 61 publications

Task Selection and Workload: A Focus on Completing Easy Tasks Hurts Long-Term Performance

Task Selection and Workload: A Focus on Completing Easy Tasks Hurts Long-Term Performance

Why do surgeons schedule their own surgeries?

The value of process friction: The role of justification in reducing medical costs

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