Telfer Research Seminar Series - Amy Cohn
Avoiding the Healthcare Access Death Spiral: The Need for a Systems-Based Approach
Deadline: April 9, 2026,
***M.Sc. Students, these seminars can count towards the six mandatory Telfer Research Seminars Series required for your program (MGT 6191/ MGT 6991 / MHS 6991) (4 seminars for MSc Project-based students).***
Amy Cohn, PhD
Access issues are one of the biggest challenges plaguing healthcare across the nation. Lengthy delays to get an appointment, whether for primary care or to see a specialist, lead to worse health outcomes, significant emotional stress for patients and their families, and ever-growing frustration and burnout for providers. The seemingly-obvious solution – increase capacity – is not only significantly challenging financially, but may in fact make the problem worse, not better, due to unanticipated downstream effects. We focus on how access issues impact the entirety of the system and how to effectively evaluate solutions to ensure awareness and success.
About the Speaker
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering
Faculty Director, Center for Healthcare Engineering and Patient Safety (CHEPS)
Chief Transformation Officer, Michigan Medicine
Amy Ellen Mainville Cohn is an Alfred F. Thurnau Professor in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she also holds an appointment in the Department of Health Management and Policy in the School of Public Health. Dr. Cohn is the Faculty Director of the Center for Healthcare Engineering and Patient Safety (CHEPS) and the Chief Transformation Officer for Michigan Medicine. She holds an A.B. in applied mathematics, magna cum laude, from Harvard University and a PhD in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her primary research interests are in applications of combinatorial optimization, particularly to healthcare and aviation, and to the challenges of optimization problems with multiple objective criteria.
