How COVID-19 Created a Health Care Backlog
Business
During the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, hospitals and health care facilities across the country stopped non-essential and elective procedures to mitigate the spread of the disease. While that may have been the right call to help flatten the curve, the decision also delayed millions of women from getting routine mammograms to detect breast cancer. Scientists from across Penn worked together on a study with Independence Blue Cross, using the company’s insurance data to quantify the effect of the pandemic on both screening and diagnostic mammograms. The study, titled “Disruptions in Preventive Care: Mammograms During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” was recently published in the journal Health Services Research. Hummy Song, a Wharton professor of operations, information and decisions, and Aaron Smith-McLallen, director of data science and health care analytics for Independence Blue Cross, are two of the co-authors. They joined [email protected] to share the results of the study.
Wharton Business
Feb 15, 2021
