Managing the quality-speed tradeoff in blockchain-supported healthcare diagnostic services

Mingyao Sun, Qiangfei Chai and Chi To Ng

Omega, 2023, vol. 120, issue C

Abstract: Healthcare systems suffer from misdiagnosis and high congestion. Hospitals and diagnostic service centers need to weigh the benefits of running an additional test to improve the diagnostic accuracy (service quality) against the cost of the overall delay to the patients (service speed). Blockchain can improve the average service rate (i.e., accelerating effect) and reduce the misdiagnosis concerns. This paper develops strategic queuing models to investigate the operational impacts of blockchain on the quality-speed tradeoff and price decisions of a diagnostic service center. We first compare the service center's equilibrium decisions between cases in which blockchain is (or is not) implemented. Then, we investigate how the service equilibrium changes by introducing patient heterogeneity that results from a proportion of patients not wishing to use blockchain in practice. We show that, in the absence of patient heterogeneity, blockchain may not necessarily improve the service quality or the service price but certainly decreases system congestion and improves the effective demand. However, in the presence of patient heterogeneity, we find that although blockchain is beneficial to improving the service rate, the diagnostic service system tends to be more congested when the accelerating effect becomes more obvious.

Keywords: Strategic queuing; Quality-speed tradeoff; Blockchain; Service price; Service rate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305048323000750
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jomega:v:120:y:2023:i:c:s0305048323000750

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.omega.2023.102911

Access Statistics for this article

Omega is currently edited by B. Lev

More articles in Omega from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().