About

Sergei Savin is a Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions at the Wharton School. His research expertise centers on operational aspects of health care delivery, including improving patient access to care and optimal management of diagnostic and treatment capacity. His work also involves diffusion models for new products and services, revenue management, and the application of optimization techniques in various management contexts. Professor Savin has published articles in leading journals such as Management Science, Operations Research, and Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and actively participates in editorial activities for several premier journals including Management Science, Operations Research, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management. He teaches a PhD course on optimization, the core MBA course on Business Analytics, and the core undergraduate course on Operations and Information Management. Before joining Wharton in July 2009, he was on the faculty at Columbia Business School and London Business School. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Operations and Information Management from the Wharton School.

Research topics

• Business
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Economics
• Political Science
• Marketing
• Medicine
• Engineering
• Actuarial science
• Nursing
• Family medicine
• Industrial organization
• Accounting
• Medical emergency
• Operations research
• Microeconomics
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Mixed Appointment Scheduling: Managing Routine and Same-Day Appointments for Outpatient Clinics

  Production and Operations Management · 2025-08-09

  articleCorresponding

  This article introduces a novel scheduling approach for managing a mix of routine and same-day appointments in an outpatient clinic. While the well-known carve-out scheduling (COS) policy reserves the provider capacity for same-day patients, its use of dedicated slots for each patient class may increase the risk of system underutilization or overload and long patient wait times. We propose the mixed appointment scheduling (MAS) policy, which allows routine and same-day patients to share common appointment slots, and investigate its performance relative to COS. By formulating a new model to determine the optimal scheduling decisions under the MAS policy, we demonstrate that the problem’s objective function (the total daily cost) is no longer multimodular in the presence of priority service discipline and demand uncertainty. We develop efficient methods to identify optimal scheduling policies and show that MAS reduces system costs, improves utilization, and decreases delays, particularly when same-day demand is moderate relative to clinic capacity.

  PublisherDOI

• Horizontal Consolidation in Healthcare Markets: Can Performance Incentives Preserve Access to Care?

  Production and Operations Management · 2025-06-02 · 1 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  We study the effects of hospital consolidations on access to care in a competitive healthcare market in the presence of performance incentives. We consider a transition from a “pre-merger” market configuration where a payer delegates services to a market with two competing hospitals to a “horizontally consolidated” configuration under which the same entity manages two hospitals. We focus on two research questions: How should the payer set access-based performance incentives in response to a horizontal market consolidation? What are the effects of consolidation on patient access to care? We use queueing dynamics to describe patient care processes and analyze the strategic interactions between hospitals and the optimal design of performance-based incentives in different market configurations. Specifically, we consider contracts where hospital compensation for delivering care includes a combination of fee-for-service payments and bonus components tied to the level of access to care patients receive. We derive the optimal bonus-type contracts that the payer can use to adapt to changes in market concentration, and we quantify the resulting impact on patient access to care and social welfare. In our analysis, we consider two alternative settings: the “fixed-FFS” setting, where the fee-for-service component cannot be altered, and the “flexible-FFS” setting, where both the fee-for-service and the bonus components can be adjusted in response to changes in the market composition. Our analysis shows that the bonus-type performance incentives provide the payer with the ability to protect patient access to care upon hospital consolidation in a wide range of problem settings, provided that the intensity of competition between the hospitals is sufficiently strong. If, otherwise, the intensity of competition is relatively weak, horizontal consolidation may compromise access to care.

  PublisherDOI

• Tackling Geographical Health Disparities: Hospital Collaborations in the Age of Telemedicine

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Taxis on Ride-Hailing Platforms: Managing On-Demand Urban Mobility Ecosystems

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Preparing for the Next Health Emergency: Concurrent Management of Pandemic and Non-Pandemic Demand

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Too Much Information: When Does Additional Testing Benefit Schools?

  Management Science · 2023-11-01 · 1 citations

  article

  U.S. K–12 school districts that traditionally utilized ongoing “formative” assessments of student progress increasingly rely on additional “interim” assessments to predict student performance on standardized tests. Moreover, some districts are experimenting with merit-based teacher bonuses tied to standardized test scores. We examine the relationship between interim assessments and teacher bonuses using a two-period principal–agent model. The school district (principal), operating under a limited budget, decides whether to implement interim assessments and how much merit pay to offer, and teachers (agents) choose how much effort to exert in each period. We use two-state (proficient versus not proficient) Markovian dynamics to describe the evolution of student test readiness, in which the transition probability in a given period depends on both teachers’ effort decisions and the starting state. Our results indicate that, despite the popularity of interim assessments, their usefulness is far from guaranteed. In particular, the accuracy promised by these assessments is a double-edged sword: positive midyear results can make it easier to incentivize second period teacher effort, but negative results can have a demotivating effect. Moreover, even when an interim assessment does result in a higher probability of the school ending the year in the proficient state, the resulting higher expected costs of merit-based bonuses for the district may exceed the available budget. Thus, even a free interim assessment might be too expensive for the school district. This paper was accepted by Charles Corbett, operations management. Funding: This research was supported by the Risk Management Center Russell Ackoff Doctoral Student Fellowship and the Fishman-Davidson Center for Service and Operations Management, both at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.01547 .

  PublisherDOI

• Patient‐controlled use of nonphysician providers: Appointment scheduling in mixed‐provider settings

  Production and Operations Management · 2023-04-06 · 3 citations

  article

  The aging population and increasing chronic disease load are rapidly changing the face of primary care delivery, with mid‐level (e.g., nurse) practitioners providing growing proportion of patient care. Potential differences in the quality of care offered by physicians and nurse practitioners may affect patient preferences, thus leading to patient choice behavior. This paper focuses on the problem of appointment scheduling for physician–nurse teams in the presence of patient choice and no‐shows. We propose a novel model that accounts for patient choices in a system with two provider types. Despite the increased structural complexity of the model, we derive sufficient conditions under which the problem is efficiently solvable. To counter the computational challenges arising in the general setting, we propose an easy‐to‐implement heuristic, which is proven to be optimal in the absence of patient no‐shows. Our numerical study shows how the ratio of qualities of care delivered by nurses and physicians affect the profitability of the medical practice, enabling the analysis of the trade‐offs involved in hiring a nurse practitioner. This paper introduces a patient‐controlled approach to incorporating nonphysician providers into physician‐led outpatient care delivery systems and compares it to widely used “ice breaker” and “standalone” modes of using nonphysician providers. Our findings reveal that clinical practices that employ mixed (physicians and nonphysicians) provider pools can significantly improve their financial and operational performance by moving away from the “ice breaker” and “standalone” use of nonphysician providers by delaying the selection of an appropriate care provider till the actual day of care delivery.

  PublisherDOI

• Patient Sensitivity to Emergency Department Waiting Time Announcements

  Manufacturing & Service Operations Management · 2023-12-20 · 5 citations

  article

  Problem definition: Emergency department (ED) delay announcement systems are implemented in many countries. We answer three important questions pertaining to the operations and effectiveness of such systems by studying the public hospital network and ED waiting time (WT) announcement system in Hong Kong’s “universal” public healthcare system: (1) How many patients are aware of (and sensitive to) the ED WT announcements? (2) How sensitive are these patients to the announced WT? (3) How can the Hong Kong government improve the WT announcement system? Methodology/results: We study over 1.3 million patient visits to the 17 tier 1 public EDs. We structurally estimate the fraction of patients sensitive to the announced WT and their sensitivity to the announcements as well as patient characteristics that lead to higher sensitivity. In the patient’s ED choice decision, we estimate the trade-off between the travel distance to an ED and the expected WT at the ED. We find that 3.1% of the patients are sensitive to the announced WT, and they are willing to travel an additional 4.8 km to save one hour of waiting. Urgent patients are less likely to be sensitive to the delay announcement than less urgent patients, but those that are sensitive are more WT averse than their less urgent counterparts. Counterfactual analysis shows that the average actual WT and number of patients who leave without being seen can be reduced by 4.6% and 8.5%, respectively, by increasing the fraction of sensitive patients to 15.0% and, simultaneously, reducing the announced WT assessment window to one hour from the current level of three hours. Further improvement can be achieved by providing predicted WT information based on the current level of ED crowding or less extreme past performance—median WT rather than the currently used 95th percentile. Managerial implications: The Hong Kong government should utilize the two levers of the announcement system: the sensitive fraction of patients and information recency. Increasing the sensitive fraction can benefit the system when it is below a certain threshold level. However, administrators should exercise caution when the sensitive fraction becomes large and consider implementing additional measures to mitigate the negative effects of information delay. The sensitive group of patients can unfairly be punished for their proactiveness. Shortening the announced WT assessment window and providing predicted WT are possible alternatives that not only improve overall performance but also exhibit strong robustness to increases in the sensitive population. History: This paper has been accepted as part of the 2023 Manufacturing & Service Operations Management Practice-Based Research Competition. Funding: This work was supported by the Research Grants Council of the University Grants Committee through the Collaborative Research Fund [Grant C7162-20G] and General Research Fund [Grant 17502320]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.0457 .

  PublisherDOI

• Off-Platform Threats in On-Demand Services

  Manufacturing & Service Operations Management · 2023-01-11 · 17 citations

  article

  Problem definition: Online platforms that provide on-demand services are often threatened by the phenomenon of leakage, where customer-provider pairs may decide to transact “off-platform” to avoid paying commissions to the platform. This paper investigates properties of services that make them vulnerable or resistant to leakage. Academic/practical relevance: In practice, much attention has been given to platform leakage, with platforms experimenting with multiple approaches to alleviate leakage and maintain their customer and provider bases. Yet, there is a current dearth of studies in the operations literature that systematically analyze the key factors behind platform leakage. Our work fills this gap and answers practical questions regarding the sustainability of platform. Methodology: We develop two game-theoretical models that capture service providers’ and customers’ decisions whether to conduct transactions on or off the platform. In the first (“perfect information”) model, we assume that customers are equipped with information to select their desired providers on the platform, whereas in the second (“imperfect information”) model, we assume customers are randomly matched with available providers by the platform. Results: For profit maximizing platforms, we show that leakage occurs if and only if the value of the counterparty risk from off-platform transactions exceeds a threshold. Across both models, platforms tend to be more immunized against leakage as provider pool sizes increase, customer valuations for service increase, their waiting costs decrease, or variability in service times are reduced. Finally, by comparing the degree of leakage between both settings, we find that neither model dominates the other across all parameter combinations. Managerial implications: Our results provide guidance to existing platform managers or entrepreneurs who are considering “platforming” their services. Namely, based on a few key features of the operating environment, managers can assess the severity of the threat of platform leakage for their specific business context. Our results also suggest how redesigning the waiting process, reducing service time variability, upskilling providers can reduce the threat of leakage. They also suggest the conditions under which revealing provider quality information to customers can help to curb leakage. Funding: J. Goh’s work was supported by a National University of Singapore Start-Up [Grant R-314-000-110-133] and a 2021 Humanities and Social Sciences Fellowship from the National University of Singapore. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.1179 .

  PublisherDOI

• Searching for the Best Yardstick: Cost of Quality Improvements in the U.S. Hospital Industry

  Management Science · 2023-07-27 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  The Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program is Medicare’s implementation of yardstick incentives applied to hospitals in the United States. Under the VBP Program, 2% of all Medicare payments to hospitals, estimated to be U.S. $1.9 billion in fiscal year 2021, are withheld and redistributed based on their relative performance in the quality of delivered care. We develop a dynamic mean-field equilibrium model in which hospitals are engaged in repeated competition under yardstick incentives. Using structural estimation methods, we recover key parameters that govern hospitals’ decisions to invest in quality improvement, including the financial and nonfinancial costs and uncertain outcomes of investment. By dynamically solving for hospitals’ individually optimal investment policies, we estimate the trajectory of quality improvements for each hospital, including its investment decisions and quality levels throughout the implementation of the VBP Program. Our counterfactual analyses explore the benefits, on the one hand, of modifying the overall size of the yardstick incentives and on the other hand, of implementing a more focused program tailored to hospital type. We find that increasing the size of the incentives from 2% to 4% would have resulted in an additional quality investment of U.S. $1.2 billion from 2011 to 2018, leading to a 3.3% reduction in the average rate of central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs). Applying yardstick incentives to the tailored hospital peer groups, even without changing the size of the incentives, can lead to an average reduction of 1.4% in the rate of CLABSI among groups of hospitals associated with the highest costs of quality investment. This paper was accepted by Stefan Scholtes, healthcare management. Funding: K. Moon acknowledges support from the Wharton School [Claude Marion Endowed Faculty Scholar Award]. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4875 .

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Linda V. Green

  Columbia University

  21 shared

• Grant Greenberg

  Lehigh Valley Health Network

  16 shared

• Scott Hines

  Crystal Run Healthcare

  16 shared

• Robert X. Murphy

  Lehigh Valley Hospital-Pocono

  16 shared

• Michael N. Minear

  Crystal Run Healthcare

  16 shared

• Derek Lake

  Cornell University

  16 shared

• Hessam Bavafa

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  10 shared

• Christian Terwiesch

  University of Pennsylvania

  8 shared

Labs

• Operations, Information and Decisions DepartmentPI