Clinical pathways and operations management: it takes two to tango
Demeulemeester, Erik Sermeus, Walter Beliƫn, Jeroen Cardoen, Brecht
Demeulemeester, Erik
Sermeus, Walter
Beliƫn, Jeroen
Cardoen, Brecht
Citations
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Publication Type
Journal article
Editor
Supervisor
Publication Year
2007
Journal
Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management
Book
Publication Volume
LII
Publication Issue
3
Publication Begin page
451
Publication End page
469
Publication NUmber of pages
Collections
Abstract
In this paper it is shown that quality of care in a hospital setting is not solely determined by the medical treatment of patients. Organizational structure clearly contributes to the qualitative performance measures too. In particular, clinical pathways could be specified in which both components are integrated. Moreover, the operating theater is identified to be an instrument in those clinical pathways that enables the health manager to exploit the relations and dependencies between facilities. This results in an improved patient flow and an adequate use of scarce resources. It will be shown that algorithms and software tools can assist in increasing the performance of the hospital as a whole. These improvements could be gained both through visualization and optimization. Some Belgian case studies will be referred to in order to show the practical value of the academic approaches.