In both rich and poor nations, public resources for health care are inadequate to meet demand. Policy makers and health care providers must determine how to provide the most effective health care to citizens using the limited resources that are available. This chapter describes current and future challenges in the delivery of health care, and outlines the role that operations research (OR) models can play in helping to solve those problems. The chapter concludes with an overview of this book – its intended audience, the areas covered, and a description of the subsequent chapters. KEY WORDS Health care delivery, Health care planning HEALTH CARE DELIVERY: PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES 3 1.1 WORLDWIDE HEALTH: THE PAST 50 YEARS Human health has improved significantly in the last 50 years. In 1950, global life expectancy was 46 years [1]. That figure rose to 61 years by 1980 and to 67 years by 1998 [2]. Much of these gains occurred in low- and middle-income countries, and were due in large part to improved nutrition and sanitation, medical innovations, and improvements in public health infrastructure.
This book offers a comprehensive reference guide to operations research theory and applications in health care systems. It provides readers with all the necessary tools for solving health care problems. The respective chapters, written by prominent researchers, explain a wealth of both basic and advanced concepts of operations research for the management of operating rooms, intensive care units, supply chain, emergency medical service, human resources, lean health care, and procurement. To foster a better understanding, the chapters include relevant examples or case studies. Taken together, they form an excellent reference guide for researchers, lecturers and postgraduate students pursuing research on health care management problems. The book presents a dynamic snapshot on the field that is expected to stimulate new directions and stimulate new ideas and developments.
From the Preface: Collectively, the chapters in this book address application domains including inpatient and outpatient services, public health networks, supply chain management, and resource constrained settings in developing countries. Many of the chapters provide specific examples or case studies illustrating the applications of operations research methods across the globe, including Africa, Australia, Belgium, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Chapters 1-4 review operations research methods that are most commonly applied to health care operations management including: queuing, simulation, and mathematical programming. Chapters 5-7 address challenges related to inpatient services in hospitals such as surgery, intensive care units, and hospital wards. Chapters 8-10 cover outpatient services, the fastest growing part of many health systems, and describe operations research models for primary and specialty care services, and how to plan for patient no-shows. Chapters 12 – 16 cover topics related to the broader integration of health services in the context of public health, including optimizing the location of emergency vehicles, planning for mass vaccination events, and the coordination among different parts of a health system. Chapters 17-18 address supply chain management within hospitals, with a focus on pharmaceutical supply management, and the challenges of managing inventory for nursing units. Finally, Chapters 19-20 provide examples of important and emerging research in the realm of humanitarian logistics.
"In Hospital Operations, two leading Operations Management experts and five practicing clinicians demonstrate how to apply new OM advances and metrics to substantially improve any hospital's performance. Replete with examples, Hospital Operations shows how to generate principles-driven breakthrough ideas to systematically improve emergency departments, operating rooms, nursing unites, and diagnostic units." -- Back cover
This edited volume captures and communicates the best thinking on how to improve healthcare by improving the delivery of services -- providing care when and where it is needed most -- through application of state-of-the-art scheduling systems. Over 12 chapters, the authors cover aspects of setting appointments, allocating healthcare resources, and planning to ensure that capacity matches needs for care. A central theme of the book is increasing healthcare efficiency so that both the cost of care is reduced and more patients have access to care. This can be accomplished through reduction of idle time, lessening the time needed to provide services and matching resources to the needs where they can have the greatest possible impact on health. Within their chapters, authors address: (1) Use of scheduling to improve healthcare efficiency. (2) Objectives, constraints and mathematical formulations. (3) Key methods and techniques for creating schedules. (4) Recent developments that improve the available problem solving methods. (5) Actual applications, demonstrating how the methods can be used. (6) Future directions in which the field of research is heading. Collectively, the chapters provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of models and methods for scheduling the delivery of patient care for all parts of the healthcare system. Chapter topics include setting appointments for ambulatory care and outpatient procedures, surgical scheduling, nurse scheduling, bed management and allocation, medical supply logistics and routing and scheduling for home healthcare.
Describes how to build a competitive edge by developing superior operations This comprehensive, practice-oriented text illustrates how healthcare organizations can gain a competitive edge through superior operations – and demonstrates how to achieve them. Underscoring the importance of a strategic perspective, the book describes how to attain excellence in the four competitive priorities: quality, cost, delivery, and flexibility. The competitive priorities are interrelated, with excellent quality laying the foundation for performance in the other competitive priorities, and with targeted improvement initiatives having synergistic effects. The text stresses the benefits of aligning the entire operations system within the parameters of a business strategy. It equips students with a conceptual mental model of healthcare operations in which all concepts and tools fit together logically. With a hands-on approach, the book clearly demonstrates the “how-tos” of effectively managing a healthcare organization. It describes how to negotiate the different perspectives of clinicians and administrators by offering a common platform for building competitive advantage. To bring the cultural context of a healthcare organization to life, the book engages students with a series of short vignettes of a fictitious healthcare organization as it strives to achieve the status of a highly reliable organization. Integrated throughout are a variety of tools and quantitative techniques with step-by-step instructions to assist in problem solving and process improvements. Also included are mind maps linking competitive priorities and concepts, quick-reference icons, dashboards displaying measurement and process tracking, and boxed features. Several project ideas, team assignments, and creative thinking exercises are proposed. A comprehensive Instructor Packet and online tutorials further enhance the book’s outstanding value. Key Features: Includes mind maps to connect competitive priorities, concepts, and tools Provides an extensive tool kit for problem solving and process improvements Presents icons throughout the text to emphasize competitive priorities and tool coverage Emphasizes measurement with dashboards and includes data files for statistical process control, queuing, and simulation Demonstrates human dynamics and organizational challenges through realistic vignettes Presents boxed features of frequently asked questions an real-world implementations of concepts Provides comprehensive Instructor Packet and online tutorials
Operations management is increasingly a critical skill needed in today’s health care leader. Managing your organization’s complex interdisciplinary processes, labor and asset productivity, and operational performance involves quantitative and qualitative skills. Covering a range of topics from quality management to data analyses, Health Care Operations Management: A Systems Approach clearly explains the important concepts and skills necessary to lead a modern health care organization. Logically organized in four parts, Health Care Operations Management: A Systems Approach looks at operations, systems and financial management; methods for improving operations; analytical tools and technology; and health care supply chain. Thoroughly revised, the new Third Edition offers new content on health plan operations, use of information technology in operations management, and analytics – topics often overlooked in most health care operational management texts.
This new edition continues to emphasize the use of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to create optimization-based benchmarks within hospitals, physician group practices, health maintenance organizations, nursing homes and other health care delivery organizations. Suitable for graduate students learning DEA applications in health care as well as for practicing administrators, it is divided into two sections covering methods and applications. Section I considers efficiency evaluations using DEA; returns to scale; weight restricted (multiplier) models; non-oriented or slack-based models, including in this edition two versions of non-controllable variable models and categorical variable models; longitudinal (panel) evaluations and the effectiveness dimension of performance evaluation. A new chapter then looks at new and advanced models of DEA, including super-efficiency, congestion DEA, network DEA, and dynamic network models. Mathematical formulations of various DEA models are placed in end-of-chapter appendices. Section II then looks at health care applications within particular settings, chapter-by-chapter, including hospitals, physician practices, nursing homes and health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Other chapters then explore home health care and home health agencies; dialysis centers, community mental health centers, community-based your services, organ procurement organizations, aging agencies and dental providers; DEA models to evaluate provider performance for specific treatments, including stroke, mechanical ventilation and perioperative services. A new chapter then examines international-country-based applications of DEA in health care in 16 different countries, along with OECD and multi-country studies. Most of the existing chapters in this section were expanded with recent applications. Included with the book is online access to a learning version of DEA Solver software, written by Professor Kaoru Tone, which can solve up to 50 DMUs for various DEA models listed in the User’s Guide at the end of the book.
Health Care Operations and Supply Chain Management This innovative text offers a thorough foundation in operations management, supply chain management,?and the strategic implementation of programs, techniques, and tools for reducing costs and improving quality in health care organizations. The authors incorporate the features and functions of Microsoft Excel where appropriate in their coverage of supply chain strategy, process design and analysis of health care operations, managing health care operations quality, and planning and controlling health care operations. Health Care Operations and Supply Chain Management offers real-world examples to illustrate the most current concepts and techniques such as value stream mapping and Six Sigma. In addition, the authors clearly demonstrate how operations and process improvement relate to contemporary health care trends such as evidence-based medicine and pay-for-performance. Health Care Operations and Supply Chain Management contains: Leading edge concepts and techniques Real-life data and actual examples from health care settings to underscore the main concepts in the text Instruction in the use of Microsoft Excel for health care operations and supply side management The book's numerous screen shots and detailed instructions guide the student through the use of Microsoft Excel's many functions and features.
