Dennis Gillings Professor of Health Management
Director of the Centre for Health Leadership & Enterprise (CCHLE)
Diploma, PhD, Habilitation (Karlsruhe University)
Research interests
Stefan’s work addresses the challenge of health service innovation after COVID.
While technological advances drive service innovation almost everywhere, healthcare seems stuck in a 20th century service model. This model is safe but has driven up costs for decades. These cost pressures turned into unsustainable workforce pressures when funding growth was frozen after the 2008 financial crisis. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is now pushing this service model rapidly to a breaking point – with the most devastating effects for the most vulnerable in society. Incremental improvements of the existing model will no longer suffice to address this societal challenge. A more radical change is required that supports a three-pronged strategy of reducing patient need, reducing workforce pressure, and making step-change improvements to clinical productivity. Stefan’s research supports this service innovation effort.
Service innovation in healthcare is not primarily a technological or operational challenge but, first and foremost, a business model challenge. To help address this challenge, Stefan and Cambridge Judge Business Doctorate student Carter Dredge have founded the Healthcare Utility Initiative, with a mission to improve access to affordable healthcare for everyone by developing, refining and supporting new, disruptive not-for-profit business models. The initiative supports a vision of vibrant local and national ecosystems of not-for-profit social enterprises, led by entrepreneurs with a social mission, who challenge the status quo of large powerful incumbent organisations and drive health service innovation at scale.
Subject group: Operations & Technology Management
Professional experience
Stefan has over two decades of experience teaching MBA students and executives. His executive teaching focuses on the development and delivery of bespoke leadership programmes to support system change and transformation.
Stefan’s research and teaching are strongly practice-based and embedded in close collaborations with executives in health systems, hospitals and primary care practices in the NHS and the USA. He is the founding director of the Cambridge Centre for Health Leadership & Enterprise and a founding member of the East of England Joint Evidence and Intelligence Cell between the NHS, Public Health England, Health Education England and Cambridge Judge, established in 2020 to support COVID planning in the region.
Stefan is Chair of the Board of Granta Medical Practices in Cambridgeshire, honorary consultant at Public Health England, and Department Editor for Healthcare Management at Management Science.
Previous appointments
Stefan joined Cambridge Judge in 1996 from the University of Karlsruhe as a Lecturer in Operations Research. Prior to his appointment as Dennis Gillings Professor in 2010, he was Professor of Management Science.
Selected publications
Here are a selection of Stefan Scholtes’ publications. Please see the “Selected publications” tab above for a more comprehensive list.
Dredge, C., Liljenquist, D. and Scholtes, S. (2022) “Disruptive collaboration: a thesis for pro-competitive collaboration in health care.” NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery, 29 March 2022 (DOI: 10.1056/CAT.22.0057) (available online)
Dredge, C. and Scholtes, S. (2021) “The health care utility model: a novel approach to doing business.” NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery, 8 July 2021 (DOI: 10.1056/CAT.21.0189) (available online)
Bobroske, K., Freeman, M., Huan, L., Cattrell, A. and Scholtes, S. (2022) “Curbing the opioid epidemic at its root: the effect of provider discordance after opioid initiation.” Management Science, 68(3): 2003-2015 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2021.4252) (available online)
Freeman, M., Robinson, S. and Scholtes, S. (2021) “Gatekeeping, fast and slow: an empirical study of referral errors in the emergency department.” Management Science, 67(7): 4209-4232 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2020.3711)
Freeman, M., Savva, N. and Scholtes, S. (2020) “Economies of scale and scope in hospitals: an empirical study of volume spillovers.” Management Science (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2019.3572) (published online May 2020)
Kuntz, L., Scholtes, S. and Sülz, S. (2019) “Separate and concentrate: accounting for patient complexity in general hospitals.” Management Science, 65(6): 2445-2945 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2018.3064) (available online)
Journal articles
Scholtes, S. (1992) “Minimal pairs of convex bodies in two dimensions.” Mathematika, 39(2): 267-273 (DOI: 10.1112/s002557930001500x)
Kuntz, L. and Scholtes, S. (1993) “Constraint qualifications in quasidifferentiable optimization.” Mathematical Programming, 60(1-3): 339-347 (DOI: 10.1007/bf01580618)
Kuntz, L. and Scholtes, S. (1994) “Structural analysis of nonsmooth mappings, inverse functions, and metric projections.” Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, 188(2): 346-386 (DOI: 10.1006/jmaa.1994.1431)
Kuntz, L. and Scholtes, S. (1994) “A nonsmooth variant of the Mangasarian-Fromovitz constraint qualification.” Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, 82(1): 59-75 (DOI: 10.1007/bf02191779)
Kuntz, L. and Scholtes, S. (1995) “Qualitative aspects of the local approximation of a piecewise differentiable function.” Nonlinear Analysis, Theory, Methods and Applications, 25(2): 197-215 (DOI: 10.1016/0362-546x(94)00202-s)
Bartels, S.G., Kuntz, L. and Scholtes, S. (1995) “Continuous selections of linear functions and nonsmooth critical point theory.” Nonlinear Analysis, Theory, Methods and Applications, 24(3): 385-407 (DOI: 10.1016/0362-546x(95)91645-6)
Scholtes, S. (1996) “A proof of the branching number bound for normal manifolds.” Linear Algebra and Its Applications, 246: 83-95
Scholtes, S. (1996) “Homeomorphism conditions for coherently oriented piecewise affine mappings.” Mathematics of Operations Research, 21(4): 955-978
Agrachev, A.A., Pallaschke, D. and Scholtes, S. (1997) “On Morse theory for piecewise smooth functions.” Journal of Dynamical and Control Systems, 3(4): 449-469 (DOI: 10.1007/bf02463278)
Ralph, D. and Scholtes, S. (1997) “Sensitivity analysis of composite piecewise smooth equations.” Mathematical Programming, 76(3): 593-612
Scholtes, S. and Stohr, M. (1999) “Exact penalization of mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints.” SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 37(2): 617-652
Kuntz, L. and Scholtes, S. (2000) “Measuring the robustness of empirical efficiency valuations.” Management Science, 46(6): 807-823
Scheel, H. and Scholtes, S. (2000) “Mathematical programs with complementarity constraints: stationarity, optimality, and sensitivity.” Mathematics of Operations Research, 25(1): 1-22
Scholtes, S. and Stohr, M. (2001) “How stringent is the linear independence assumption for mathematical programs with complementarity constraints?” Mathematics of Operations Research, 26(4): 851-863
Scholtes, S. (2001) “Convergence properties of a regularization scheme for mathematical programs with complementarity constraints.” SIAM Journal on Optimization, 11(4): 918-936
Scheel, H. and Scholtes, S. (2003) “Continuity of DEA efficiency measures.” Operations Research, 51(1): 149-159
Scholtes, S. (2004) “Nonconvex structures in nonlinear programming.” Operations Research, 52(3): 368-383 (DOI: 10.1287/opre.1030.0102)
Demiguel, V., Friedlander ,M.P., Nogales, F.J. and Scholtes, S. (2005) “A two-sided relaxation scheme for mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints.” SIAM Journal on Optimization, 16(2): 587-609 (DOI: 10.1137/04060754x)
de Neufville, R., Scholtes, S. and Wang, T. (2006) “Real options by spreadsheet: parking garage case example.” Journal of Infrastructure Systems, 12(2): 107-111 (DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)1076-0342(2006)12:2(107))
Fletcher, R., Leyffer, S., Ralph, D. and Scholtes, S. (2006) “Local convergence of SQP methods for mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints.” SIAM Journal on Optimization, 17(1): 259-286 (DOI: 10.1137/S1052623402407382)
Kuntz, L., Scholtes, S. and Vera, A. (2007) “Incorporating efficiency in hospital-capacity planning in Germany.” European Journal of Health Economics, 8(3): 213-223 (DOI: 10.1007/s10198-006-0021-6)
Kuosmanen, T., Post, T. and Scholtes, S. (2007) “Non-parametric tests of productive efficiency with errors-in-variables.” Journal of Econometrics, 136(1): 131-162 (DOI: 10.1016/j.jeconom.2005.08.003)
Mason, R., Savva, N. and Scholtes, S. (2008) “The economics of licensing contracts.” Nature Biotechnology, 26(8): 855-857 (DOI: 10.1038/bioe.2008.7)
Kuntz, L., Scholtes, S. and Vera, A. (2008) “DRG cost weight volatility and hospital performance.” OR Spektrum, 30(2): 331-354 (DOI: 10.1007/s00291-006-0063-2)
de Neufille, R., Hodota, K., Sussman, J. and Scholtes, S. (2008) “Real options to increase the value of intelligent transportation systems.” Transportation Research Record, (2086): 40-47 (DOI: 10.3141/2086-05)
Ching, W.K., Scholtes, S. and Zhang, S.Q. (2011) “Numerical algorithms for dynamic traffic demand estimation between zones in a network.” Engineering Optimization, 36(3): 379-400 (DOI: 10.1080/0305215042000267045)
Eralp, M.N., Scholtes, S., Martell, G., Winter, R. and Exley, A.R. (2012) “Screening of healthcare workers for tuberculosis: development and validation of a new health economic model to inform practice.” BMJ Open, 2(2): 0- (DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000630)
Welbourne, J., Gupta, A., Scholtes, S., Dean, J. and Ahluwalia, J. (2012) “Training: where tomorrow’s leaders hit new heights.” Health Service Journal, 122(6327): 19-21
Kuntz, L. and Scholtes, S. (2013) “Physicians in leadership: the association between medical director involvement and staff-to-patient ratios.” Health Care Management Science, 16(2): 129-138 (DOI: 10.1007/s10729-012-9218-7)
Lee, Y.S. and Scholtes, S. (2014) “Empirical prediction intervals revisited.” International Journal of Forecasting, 30(2): 217-234 (DOI: 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2013.07.018)
Savva, N. and Scholtes, S. (2014) “Opt-out options in new product co-development partnerships.” Production and Operations Management, 23(8): 1370-1386 (DOI: 10.1111/poms.12059)
Kuntz, L., Mennicken, R. and Scholtes, S. (2015) “Stress on the ward: evidence of safety tipping points in hospitals.” Management Science, 61(4): 754-771 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2014.1917)
Martani, C., Jin, Y., Soga, K. and Scholtes, S. (2016) “Design with uncertainty: the role of future options for infrastructure integration.” Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, 31(10): 733-748 (DOI: 10.1111/mice.12214)
Newnham, M., Bunclark, K., Abraham, N., Almeida, L.A., Cannon, J., Clare, S., Doughty, N., Dunning, J., Ng, C., Ponnaberanam, A., Scholtes, S., Sheares, K., Speed, N., Taboada, D., Toshner, M., Tsui ,S., Jenkins, D. and Pepke-Zaba, J. (2017) “Camphor score: sustained improvement in patient reported outcomes following pulmonary endarterectomy in chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension.” Thorax, 72: 0-0 (DOI: 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2017-210983.56)
Smith, W.B., Steinberg, J., Scholtes, S. and Mcnamara, I.R. (2017) “Medial compartment knee osteoarthritis: age-stratified cost-effectiveness of total knee arthroplasty, unicompartmental knee arthroplasty, and high tibial osteotomy..” Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy, 25(3): 924-933 (DOI: 10.1007/s00167-015-3821-3)
Freeman, M., Savva, N. and Scholtes, S. (2017) “Gatekeepers at work: an empirical analysis of a maternity unit.” Management Science, 63(10): 3147-3167 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2016.2512)
Han, L., Fine, J., Robinson, S.M., Boyle, A.A., Freeman, M. and Scholtes, S. (2019) “Is seniority of emergency physician associated with the weekend mortality effect? An exploratory analysis of electronic health records in the UK.” Emergency Medicine Journal, 36(12): 708-715 (DOI: 10.1136/emermed-2018-208114)
Kuntz, L., Scholtes, S. and Sulz, S. (2019) “Separate and concentrate: accounting for patient complexity in general hospitals.” Management Science, 65(6): 2482-2501 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2018.3064)
KC, D.S., Scholtes, S. and Terwiesch, C. (2020) “Empirical research in healthcare operations: past research, present understanding, and future opportunities.” Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, 22(1): 73-83 (DOI: 10.1287/msom.2019.0826)
Dredge, C. and Scholtes, S. (2021) “The health care utility model: a novel approach to doing business.” NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery, 8 July 2021 (DOI: 10.1056/CAT.21.0189) (available online)
Freeman, M., Robinson, S. and Scholtes, S. (2021) “Gatekeeping, fast and slow: an empirical study of referral errors in the emergency department.” Management Science, 67(7): 4209-4232 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2020.3711)
Freeman, M., Savva, N. and Scholtes, S. (2021) “Economies of scale and scope in hospitals: an empirical study of volume spillovers.” Management Science, 67(2): 673–697 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2019.3572)
van der Schaar, M., Alaa, A.M., Floto, A., Gimson, A., Scholtes, S., Wood, A., McKinney, E., Jarrett, D., Lio, P. and Ercole, A. (2021) “How artificial intelligence and machine learning can help healthcare systems respond to COVID-19.” Machine Learning, 110(1): 1–14 (DOI: 10.1007/s10994-020-05928-x)
Dredge, C., Liljenquist, D. and Scholtes, S. (2022) “Disruptive collaboration: a thesis for pro-competitive collaboration in health care.” NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery, 29 March 2022 (DOI: 10.1056/CAT.22.0057) (available online)
Bobroske, K., Freeman, M., Huan, L., Cattrell, A. and Scholtes, S. (2022) “Curbing the opioid epidemic at its root: the effect of provider discordance after opioid initiation.” Management Science, 68(3): 2003-2015 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2021.4252) (available online)
Books, monographs, reports & case studies
Powell, M.J.D. and Scholtes, S. (eds.) (2000) System modelling and optimization: methods, theory and applications. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic.
de Neufville, R. and Scholtes, S. (2011) Flexibility in engineering design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Scholtes, S. (2012) Introduction to piecewise differentiable equations. New York, NY: Springer.
Scholtes, S. (2015) “Reorganising care at Cambridge University Hospitals.” Cambridge Judge Business School Case Study.
