Better Healthcare Through Math

GETTING A DOCTOR'S APPOINTMENT SHOULDN'T BE HARDER THAN BOOKING A VACATION The US healthcare system excels in research, innovation, and clinical care, but is failing to keep up with the operational challenges of the digital age. Today's healthcare organizations face immense financial challenges, and their most valuable resources-people, rooms, and equipment-are being used inefficiently. The result? Long wait times for patients, overstressed staff, underused assets, and poor ROI for organizations. Why do health systems struggle with optimization? The fundamental problem is one of matching an unpredictable demand for services with a constrained supply. The math being used to solve this problem is a holdover from the paper-and-pencil era. In Better Healthcare Through Math, authors Mohan Giridharadas and Sanjeev Agrawal show you that there is a better way. Healthcare systems can harness the power of sophisticated, analytics-driven mathematics to optimize the matching of supply and demand. By upgrading to software systems built on better math, they can enable staff to make data-based decisions to flatten peaks of demand and create smoother patient flow.

SANJEEV AGRAWAL is President of LeanTaaS, a Silicon Valley-based innovator of predictive analytics solutions to healthcare’s biggest operational challenges. He and his team work closely with hundredss of leading healthcare institutions across the country. Earlier in his career Sanjeev was Google’s first head of product marketing and had leadership roles at three successful startups: CEO of Aloqa, a mobile push platform (acquired by Motorola); VP product and marketing at Tellme Networks (acquired by Microsoft); and as the founding CEO of Collegefeed (acquired by AfterCollege). Sanjeev graduated Phi Beta Kappa with an EECS degree from MIT and along the way spent time at McKinsey & Co. and Cisco Systems. He is an avid squash player and has been named by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of the top entrepreneurs innovating in healthcare. MOHAN GIRIDHARADAS is the founder and CEO of LeanTaaS, a Silicon Valley-based innovator of predictive analytics solutions that help health systems improve their operational performance. LeanTaaS products have been deployed at a hundred health systems across the United States including 12 of the top 20 health systems. Prior to starting LeanTaaS, Mohan was a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company where, in addition to helping dozens of client organizations with their operational excellence agenda, he led the Lean Manufacturing and Lean Service Operations practices in North America and the Asia Pacific region. Mohan holds an MBA from Stanford University, an MS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and a B-Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay. He and his wife have two grown daughters and live in the San Francisco Bay Area with their two dogs.

FOREWORD EFFICIENCY IS NO LONGER A LUXURY THE LOOMING CHALLENGE BETTER HEALTHCARE THROUGH MATH YOUR EHR AND TRADITIONAL TOOLS AREN’T ENOUGH OPERATING ROOMS—NO BLOCK LEFT BEHIND INPATIENT BEDS—RIGHT PATIENT, RIGHT BED, RIGHT TIME EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS—DEBOTTLENECKING THE ED CLINICS—MORE PATIENTS, LESS WAIT INFUSION CENTERS—WINNING THE GAME OF TETRIS KEYS TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION DEALING WITH UNEXPECTED DEMAND-SUPPLY SHOCKS (E.G.,COVID-19) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS