This book presents statistical processes for health care delivery and covers new ideas, methods and technologies used to improve health care organizations. It gathers the proceedings of the Third International Conference on Health Care Systems Engineering (HCSE 2017), which took place in Florence, Italy from May 29 to 31, 2017. The Conference provided a timely opportunity to address operations research and operations management issues in health care delivery systems. Scientists and practitioners discussed new ideas, methods and technologies for improving the operations of health care systems, developed in close collaborations with clinicians. The topics cover a broad spectrum of concrete problems that pose challenges for researchers and practitioners alike: hospital drug logistics, operating theatre management, home care services, modeling, simulation, process mining and data mining in patient care and health care organizations.
This book is dedicated to improving healthcare through reducing delays experienced by patients. With an interdisciplinary approach, this new edition, divided into five sections, begins by examining healthcare as an integrated system. Chapter 1 provides a hierarchical model of healthcare, rising from departments, to centers, regions and the “macro system.” A new chapter demonstrates how to use simulation to assess the interaction of system components to achieve performance goals, and Chapter 3 provides hands-on methods for developing process models to identify and remove bottlenecks, and for developing facility plans. Section 2 addresses crowding and the consequences of delay. Two new chapters (4 and 5) focus on delays in emergency departments, and Chapter 6 then examines medical outcomes that result from waits for surgeries. Section 3 concentrates on management of demand. Chapter 7 presents breakthrough strategies that use real-time monitoring systems for continuous improvement. Chapter 8 looks at the patient appointment system, particularly through the approach of advanced access. Chapter 9 concentrates on managing waiting lists for surgeries, and Chapter 10 examines triage outside of emergency departments, with a focus on allied health programs Section 4 offers analytical tools and models to support analysis of patient flows. Chapter 11 offers techniques for scheduling staff to match patterns in patient demand. Chapter 12 surveys the literature on simulation modeling, which is widely used for both healthcare design and process improvement. Chapter 13 is new and demonstrates the use of process mapping to represent a complex regional trauma system. Chapter 14 provides methods for forecasting demand for healthcare on a region-wide basis. Chapter 15 presents queueing theory as a method for modeling waits in healthcare, and Chapter 16 focuses on rapid delivery of medication in the event of a catastrophic event. Section 5 focuses on achieving change. Chapter 17 provides a diagnostic for assessing the state of a hospital and using the state assessment to select improvement strategies. Chapter 18 demonstrates the importance of optimizing care as patients transition from one care setting to the next. Chapter 19 is new and shows how to implement programs that improve patient satisfaction while also improving flow. Chapter 20 illustrates how to evaluate the overall portfolio of patient diagnostic groups to guide system changes, and Chapter 21 provides project management tools to guide the execution of patient flow projects.
Health operations management is defined as ‘the analysis, design, planning, and control of all of the steps necessary to provide a service for a client’. In other words, it is concerned with identifying the needs of clients, usually patients, and designing and delivering services to meet their needs in the most effective and efficient manner. Addressing this key healthcare industry challenge, this informative textbook crosses geographical boundaries to outline the logical steps of health operations management, focusing on the management of patient flows and resources. Until now, healthcare professionals, practitioners and students interested in this topical issue consulted general operations management textbooks, but with discussions of related fields (such as healthcare quality assurance and performance management) this dedicated volume now provides a much more relevant read. Featuring theoretical framework and practical case studies, this book also covers subjects such as hospital planning and supply chain management in healthcare, and will be a valuable reference for students and researchers in the fields of healthcare management, operations management and patient flow logistics.
Simulation in Acute Neurology is a reference on the execution of a simulation-based educational program in the management of acute neurologic emergencies. Simulation in Acute Neurology has practical value because it contains detailed descriptions of our simulation scenarios. The foundation of this book is our experience with neurosimulation―and it has been a very good one Part I provides an overview of the principles of simulation in medicine and examines the many unique opportunities simulation provides as an educational tool. Barriers to simulating neurologic emergencies are also discussed. Simulation allows a physician-in-training to be observed directly as he or she evaluates and manages acute neurologic disease. Part II is the core of the book. Fifteen acute neurologic emergencies, including complex neuroethical quandaries, are presented in detail, step by step, decision by decision, error after error. Each chapter in this section starts with an explanation of the essence of the discussed neuroemergency (THE PROBLEM BEFORE US), followed by a description of the scenario itself (THE PRESENTING CLINICAL PROBLEM), how scenarios can be adjusted to different types of learners (ADAPTING THE SCENARIO), and ends with a discussion of topics for feedback, which are generally focused around errors and pitfalls (DEBRIEFING). To show the flow of scenarios, we created two additional main headings: (THE IDEAL LEARNER) and (THE NOT-SO IDEAL LEARNER).
New from Oxford Textbooks in Psychiatry, the Oxford Textbook of Neuropsychiatry bridges the gap between general psychiatric textbooks and reference texts in neuropsychiatry. Divided into four sections, it covers core knowledge and skills for practice in all psychiatric disciplines, with key information for training in neuropsychiatry.
The goal of this book is to provide, in a friendly and refreshing manner, both theoretical concepts and practical techniques for the important and exciting field of Artificial Intelligence that can be directly applied to real-world healthcare problems. Healthcare – the final frontier. Lately, it seems like Pandora opened the box and evil was released into the world. Fortunately, there was one thing left in the box: hope. In recent decades, hope has been increasingly represented by Intelligent Decision Support Systems. Their continuing mission: to explore strange new diseases, to seek out new treatments and drugs, and to intelligently manage healthcare resources and patients. Hence, this book is designed for all those who wish to learn how to explore, analyze and find new solutions for the most challenging domain of all time: healthcare.
It has been proposed that the brain works in a Bayesian manner, and based on the free-energy principle, the brain's main function is to reduce environmental uncertainty; this is a proposed model as a universal principle governing adaptive brain function and structure. There are many pathophysiological, and clinical observations that can be easily explained by predictive Bayesian brain models. However, the novel applications of Bayesian models in translational neuroscience has been understudied and underreported. For example, variational Bayesian mixed-effects inference has been successfully tested for classification studies. A multi-task Bayesian compressive sensing approach to simultaneously estimate the full posterior of the CSA-ODF and diffusion-weighted volumes from multi-shell HARDI acquisitions has been recently publishe
