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Backlogs are nothing new. Personnel changes, a sudden influx of donations, complexity of materials to be cataloged, and countless other factors can lead to this proverbial thorn in a librarian's side. When Abbott began a new job cataloging at Texas Woman's University in fall of 2022, he inherited a significant backlog. As the sole original cataloger, he was concerned about how to make any progress while still handling daily cataloging needs. Fortunately, he joined a team that was open to finding creative solutions. Together, they implemented a strategy that helped them claim victory in their backlog battle.

COVID-19 placed a special role on fiscal policy in rescuing companies short of liquidity from insolvency. In the first months of the crisis, SMEs as the backbone of Germany's economy benefited from large and mainly indiscriminate aid measures. Avoiding business failures in a whatever-it-takes fashion contrasts, however, with the cleansing mechanism of economic crises: a mechanism which forces unviable firms out of the market, thereby reallocating resources efficiently. By focusing on firms' pre-crisis financial standing, we estimate the extent to which the policy response induced an insolvency gap and analyze whether the gap is characterized by firms which were already struggling before the pandemic. With the policy measures being focused on smaller firms, we also examine whether this insolvency gap differs with respect to firm size. Our results show that the COVID-19 policy response in Germany has triggered a backlog of insolvencies that is particularly pronounced among financially weak, small firms, having potential long-term implications on entrepreneurship and economic recovery. Plain English Summary This study analyzes the extent to which the strong policy support to companies in the early phase of the COVID-19 crisis has prevented a large wave of corporate insolvencies. Using data of about 1.5 million German companies, it is shown that it was mainly smaller firms that experienced strong financial distress and would have gone bankrupt without policy assistance. In times of crises, insolvencies usually allow for a reallocation of employees and capital to more efficient firms. However, the analysis reveals that this 'cleansing effect' is hampered in the current crisis as the largely indiscriminate granting of liquidity subsidies and the temporary suspension of the duty to file for insolvency have caused an insolvency gap that is driven by firms which were already in a weak financial position before the crisis. Overall, the insolvency gap is estimated to affect around 25,000 companies, a substantial number compared to the around 16,300 actual insolvencies in 2020. In the ongoing crisis, policy makers should prefer instruments favoring entrepreneurs who respond innovatively to the pandemic instead of prolonging the survival of near-insolvent firms.

Order backlog is an important non-GAAP metric that is a leading indicator of future earnings. We explore how various fundamental analysis metrics interacted with order backlog impacts future earnings. This study examines whether future earnings predicted by order backlog is contingent on other fundamental analysis metrics, such as a sales decrease, the cash conversion cycle, asset growth, and the ratio of order backlog to sales. We find that order backlog is an even more informative leading indicator of future earnings when sales decrease, the cash conversion cycle is longer, and asset growth is higher. In contrast, we find that order backlog in the presence of a higher order backlog to sales ratio predicts lower future earnings. We also find that market participants incorporate the moderating effect of order backlog on sales decreases and the cash conversion cycle, while we do not find the same evidence with asset growth and the backlog to sales ratio. These empirical findings are important for managers who want to effectively communicate the prospects of a firm’s future profitability, and for investors who want to understand the financial fundamentals of firms with an order backlog. Overall, our findings show that the informativeness of order backlog can be conditional on fundamental analysis metrics in certain instances.

The complex and evolving picture of COVID-19–related mortality highlights the need for data to guide the response. Yet many countries are struggling to maintain their data systems, including the civil registration system, which is the foundation for detailed and continuously available mortality statistics. We conducted a search of country and development agency Web sites and partner and media reports describing disruptions to the civil registration of births and deaths associated with COVID-19 related restrictions. We found considerable intercountry variation and grouped countries according to the level of disruption to birth and particularly death registration. Only a minority of the 66 countries were able to maintain service continuity during the COVID-19 restrictions. In the majority, a combination of legal and operational challenges resulted in declines in birth and death registration. Few countries established business continuity plans or developed strategies to deal with the backlog when restrictions are lifted. Civil registration systems and the vital statistics they generate must be strengthened as essential services during health emergencies and as core components of the response to COVID-19.

The US immigration court system seeks to “fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly administer and interpret US immigration laws” (DOJ 2022a). It represents the first exposure of many immigrants to due process and the rule of law in the United States, and occupies an integral role in the larger US immigration system. Yet it labors under a massive backlog of pending cases that undermines its core goals and objectives. The backlog reached 1.87 million cases in the first quarter of FY 2023 (Straut-Eppsteiner 2023, 6). This paper attributes the backlog to systemic failures in the broader immigration system that negatively affect the immigration courts, such as: Visa backlogs, United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) application processing delays, and other bottlenecks in legal immigration processes. The immense disparity in funding between the court system and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies that feed cases into the courts. The failure of Congress to pass broad immigration reform legislation that could ease pressure on the enforcement and court systems. The lack of standard judicial authorities vested in Immigration Judges (IJs), limiting their ability to close cases; pressure parties to “settle” cases; and manage their dockets. The absence of a statute of limitations for civil immigration offenses. Past DHS failures to establish and adhere to enforcement priorities and to exercise prosecutorial discretion (PD) throughout the removal adjudication process, including in initial decisions to prosecute. The location of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees US immigration courts, within the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice (DOJ). The misconception of many policymakers that the court system should primarily serve as an adjunct to DHS. A past record of temporary judge reassignments and government shutdowns. The paper supports a well-resourced and independent immigration court system devoted to producing the right decisions under the law. Following a short introduction, a long section on “Causes and Solutions to the Backlog” examines the multi-faceted causes of the backlog, and offers an integrated, wide-ranging set of recommendations to reverse and ultimately eliminate the backlog. The “Conclusion” summarizes the paper’s topline findings and policy proposals.

This study presents a new model of multi-item economic order quantity where deterioration is time and reliability dependent. The demand rate of this system is an advertisement, time, and reliability dependent, and also the ordering cost is reliability dependent. The paper develops a cost-effective ordering inventory model where the increase in reliability of the item leads to a rise in demand and decreases the rate of deterioration. The cycle lengths for each item of the system are constant and the same. The shortages are allowed in this economic order quantity model, which are partially lost in sales and partially backlogged. Numerical examples and graphical representation are provided to illustrate the proposed model and the significant features of the results are discussed. The proposed multi-item inventory model is solved using MATLAB, and the effects of different parameters on the inventory model are presented through sensitivity analysis.

Background: Adequate supply of health workforce with proper skills is essential to deliver appropriate health services in normal times and during disasters. Objective: To describe the role of the Saudi Temporary Contracting and Visiting Doctors Program in the provision of critical care during COVID-19 pandemic, and in the clearance of the surgical backlog thereafter. Methods: We reviewed reports of General Directorate of Health Services and Saudi Ministry of Health annual statistical books to obtain the following data: number of temporary healthcare professionals contracted from 2019 to 2022; number of intensive care unit beds before and during COVID-19 pandemic; volume of elective surgeries before, during and after COVID-19 pandemic. Results: In 2020, intensive care unit beds increased from 6341 to 9306 in governmental hospitals in response to COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 3539 temporary healthcare professionals were recruited from April to August 2020 to contribute towards staffing the added beds. During the recovery period from COVID-19 pandemic, 4322 and 4917 temporary health care professionals were recruited in 2021and 2022 respectively. Elective surgeries volume increased from 5074 in September 2020 to 17533 in September 2021 to 26242 in September 2022, surpassing the volume of surgeries in pre-COVID-19 period. Conclusions: In response to COVID-19 pandemic, and through the existing temporary contracting program, the Saudi Ministry of Health was able to recruit temporary staff of verified credentials in a timely manner, to supplement the existing staff, for activation of the newly added intensive care unit beds, and for clearing the resulting surgical backlog.

Executive Summary This paper examines the staffing needs of the US Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), as it seeks to eliminate an immigration court backlog, which approached 2.5 million pending cases at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2023. A previous study by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) attributed the backlog to systemic, long-neglected problems in the broader US immigration system. This paper provides updated estimates of the number of immigration judges (IJs) and “judge teams” (IJ teams) needed to eliminate the backlog over ten and five years based on different case receipt and completion scenarios. It also introduces a data tool that will permit policymakers, administrators and researchers to make their own estimates of IJ team hiring needs based on changing case receipt and completion data. Finally, the paper outlines the pressing need for reform of the US immigration system, including a well-resourced, robust, and independent court system, particularly in light of record “encounters” of migrants at US borders in FY 2022 and 2023.

Patients nationwide experience difficulties in accessing medical care in a timely manner due to long backlogs of appointments. Medical practices aim to utilize their valuable resources efficiently, deliver timely access to care, and at the same time they strive to provide short waiting times for patients present at the medical facility. We address the joint problem of determining the panel size of a medical practice and the number of offered appointment slots per day, so that patients do not face long backlogs and the clinic is not overcrowded. We explicitly model the two time scales involved in accessing medical care: appointment delay (order of days, weeks) and clinic delay (order of minutes, hours). Closed-form expressions are derived for the performance measures of interest based on diffusion approximations. Our model captures many features of the complex reality of outpatient care, including patient no-shows, balking behavior, and random service times. Our analysis provides theoretical and numerical support for the optimality of an “open access” policy in outpatient scheduling when we account for both types of delay, and it demonstrates the importance of considering panel sizing and scheduling decisions in a joint framework. This paper was accepted by Noah Gans, stochastic models and simulation .