Process improvement in healthcare: overall resource efficiency

This paper aims to develop a unifying and quantitative conceptual framework for healthcare processes from the viewpoint of process improvement. The work adapts standard models from operation management to the specifics of healthcare processes. We propose concepts for organizational modeling of healthcare processes, breaking down work into micro processes, tasks, and resources. In addition, we propose an axiological model which breaks down general performance goals into process metrics. The connexion between both types of models is made explicit as a system of metrics for process flow and resource efficiency. The conceptual models offer exemplars for practical support in process improvement efforts, suggesting to project leaders how to make a diagrammatic representation of a process, which data to gather, and how to analyze and diagnose a process’s flow and resource utilization. The proposed methodology links on to process improvement methodologies such as business process reengineering, six sigma, lean thinking, theory of constraints, and total quality management. In these approaches, opportunities for process improvement are identified from a diagnosis of the process under study. By providing conceptual models and practical templates for process diagnosis, the framework relates many disconnected strands of research and application in process improvement in healthcare to the unifying pursuit of process improvement. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.