Purpose – Healthcare systems are very costly and the inpatient treatment in hospitals is a major part of these costs. The question is, how can greater efficiency be effected without influencing the core business of a hospital – the cure of patients. Through improving the process flow of facility management (FM) processes, savings within these processes and less disturbance of primary processes should be accomplishable.Design/methodology/approach – In order to help introducing professional FM methods in hospitals the OPIK research project has designed standard processes for typical FM services. Processes have been field tested and evaluated in terms of interference with the core process as well as cost and quality factors have been determined.Findings – The research has shown that standard processes can be defined and the performance can be improved through restructuring the process flow by having detailed knowledge of the process characteristics. The analysis of data through linear regression shows a sign...
[1]
C E Anderson.
Hospital production--can costs be contained?
,
1979,
The American economic review.
[2]
Tom Baum,et al.
Food or facilities? The changing role of catering managers in the healthcare environment
,
2006
.
[3]
L B Lave,et al.
Hospital cost functions.
,
1984,
Annual review of public health.
[4]
Jochen Abel,et al.
Reducing health care costs through optimised facility management‐related processes
,
2003
.
[5]
Thomas G. Cowing,et al.
Multiproduct Short-Run Hospital Cost Functions: Empirical Evidence and Policy Implications from Cross-Section Data
,
1983
.