Adoption of practices for organizational effectiveness in health care supply chains: insights from UAE

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of practices and investigating of commonalities/intensities between the factors for measuring organizational effectiveness (OE) across healthcare supply chains in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Design/methodology/approach System theory coupled with the Supplier-Input-Process-Output-Customer tool was applied to facilitate the linkage between different nodes of the healthcare chain. An exploratory approach was used to explore and measure the importance of various OE factors across various nodes of the healthcare supply chain. Data were collected using a two-stage questionnaire process addressed at personnel in the UAE’s healthcare sector. Findings The study identified that 62 OE factors in the health are supply chain. Of these, 15 are related to suppliers, 14 to the healthcare process, 12 to employees, 8 to patients and the community, 6 to government directives and 7 to branding. In total, 21 common factors were identified and clustered into groups based on commonalities and intensities. Research limitations/implications The study identifies the most important factors for healthcare organizations to achieve OE for different dimensions of operations or performance. These factors will provide valuable insights for decision makers in the sector; it will provide valuable insights to healthcare professionals and academia to investigate more on these factors. Originality/value While there is an increasing research interest in healthcare supply chains, this is the first study to investigate OE across the entire chain while also evaluating the importance of and commonalities in OE-enabling factors

LÍNEAS ESTRATÉGICAS DE ACCIÓN SOSTENIBLE PARA LOS CENTROS DE ATENCIÓN MÉDICA DE LAS REGIONES DE COLOMBIA

The Sustainable Development Goals defined by the General Assembly of the United Nations, promote an action plan for the development of social, economic and environmental aspects that should be achieved before 2030. This article seeks to analyze from a qualitative perspective sustainable strategies implemented in hospitals at different countries where sustainable strategies were implemented under different socio-economic and cultural contexts, and successfully helped to efficiently improve processes while reducing their environmental impact. Current situation of hospital sustainability at a global level will be taken as a starting point to propose strategies that allow improving health services in Colombia through the adoption of the most efficient and successful methods found, which together with Industrial and Biomedical engineering tools will open new paths to ensure a healthy life.Con el planteamiento de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible, la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas adoptó un plan de acción para el desarrollo de aspectos sociales, económicos y medioambientales a 2030. Este artículo busca analizar desde una perspectiva cualitativa la sostenibilidad en el campo hospitalario en diferentes partes del mundo donde han implementado estrategias bajo diferentes contextos socio-económicos y culturales que han ayudado a mejorar los procesos eficientemente mientras se reduce el impacto ambiental. La situación actual de la sustentabilidad hospitalaria a nivel global se tomará como punto de partida para proponer estrategias que permitan mejorar los servicios de salud en Colombia a través de la adopción de los métodos más eficientes y exitosos encontrados, que en conjunto con herramientas de la ingeniería industrial y de la ingeniería biomédica permitan abrir nuevos caminos para garantizar una vida saludable desde el cuidado del medio ambiente y de los servicios médicos que se prestan a la sociedad de forma sostenible

A Framework for Prioritizing Opportunities of Improvement in the Context of Business Excellence Model in Healthcare Organization

In today\u27s world, the healthcare sector is facing challenges to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations. More and more improvement projects are being adopted to enhance healthcare services, making it more patient-centric, and enabling better cost control. Healthcare organizations strive to identify and carry out such improvement initiatives to sustain their businesses and gain competitive advantage. Seeking to reach a higher operational level of excellence, healthcare organizations utilize business excellence criteria to conduct assessment and identify organizational strengths and weaknesses. However, while such assessments routinely identify numerous areas for potential improvement, it is not feasible to conduct all improvement projects simultaneously due to limitations in time, capital, and personnel, as well as conflict with other organization\u27s projects or strategic objectives. An effective prioritization and selection approach is valuable in that it can assist the organization to optimize its available resources and outcomes. This study attempts to enable such an approach by developing a framework to prioritize improvement opportunities in healthcare in the context of the business excellence model through the integration of the Fuzzy Delphi Method and Fuzzy Interface System. To carry out the evaluation process, the framework consists of two phases. The first phase utilizes Fuzzy Delphi Method to identify the most significant factors that should be considered in healthcare for electing the improvement projects. The FDM is employed to handle the subjectivity of human assessment. The research identifies potential factors for evaluating projects, then utilizes FDM to capture expertise knowledge. The first round in FDM is intended to validate the identified list of factors from experts; which includes collecting additional factors from experts that the literature might have overlooked. When an acceptable level of consensus has been reached, a second round is conducted to obtain experts\u27 and other related stakeholders\u27 opinions on the appropriate weight of each factor\u27s importance. Finally, FDM analyses eliminate or retain the criteria to produce a final list of critical factors to select improvement projects. The second phase in the framework attempts to prioritize improvement initiatives using the Hierarchical Fuzzy Interface System. The Fuzzy Interface System combines the experts\u27 ratings for each improvement opportunity with respect to the factors deemed critical to compute the priority index. In the process of calculating the priority index, the framework allows the estimation of other intermediate indices including: social, financial impact, strategical, operational feasibility, and managerial indices. These indices bring an insight into the improvement opportunities with respect to each framework\u27s dimensions. The framework allows for a reduction of the bias in the assessment by developing a knowledge based on the perspectives of multiple experts

The effects of Lean Six Sigma critical success factors on organizational performance: a mixed-methods study on United Arab Emirates hospitals

Healthcare is an industry where mistakes are not tolerated. Various Improvement methodologies such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Lean and Six Sigma intend to improve the performance of processes and impact organisational performance. Lean Six Sigma (LSS) combines approaches for flow and quality with the intent to reduce waste, variation and defects in processes. There have been many attempts to implement LSS. However, there is a lack of academic research on the extent of implementation or whether it leads to improvement. Generic lists of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) have been created, but they have not yet been explored in more dynamic settings such as healthcare in developing countries. The purpose of this study was to examine LSS implementation in UAE hospitals being a multi-cultured, professional and high labour turnover environment. The study also examined whether Strategic, Tactical and Operational (STO) CSFs are positively correlated with LSS successful implementation measured by hospital performance. A mixed-method approach was adopted to explore the study aim and objectives also enhancing the study quality in terms of reliability and validity. A conceptual model was developed from a review of the literature and existing improvement frameworks identifying three distinct CSFs themes (Strategic, Tactical and Operational) and eight hospital performance indicators. The study analysed the findings from a survey, interviews and a brainstorming session using SPSS, thematic analysis, Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) and Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM). The study revealed that CSFs in healthcare should be sequenced in clusters, therefore creating a new framework for deploying LSS. Workforce stability and job security emerged as two new CSFs. Moreover, the empirical results showed that LSS CSFs have a positive effect on the performance of the UAE hospitals confirming previous research in other sectors. While the results confirmed that the UAE healthcare sector shares many common LSS CSFs and barriers identified in previous research, the study revealed three new barriers, namely lack of sustainability of LSS, lack of a holistic approach to deploy LSS and lack of advertising LSS success stories. This study contributes to academics and practitioners by providing a deployment framework for LSS in healthcare, offering better insights on the current status of LSS in UAE healthcare to enhance LSS deployment towards better organisational performance

IEOM Society International

IEOM Society Internationa

Data quality assurance for strategic decision making in Abu Dhabi's public organisations

“A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy”.Data quality is an important aspect of an organisation’s strategies for supporting decision makers in reaching the best decisions possible and consequently attaining the organisation’s objectives. In the case of public organisations, decisions ultimately concern the public and hence further diligence is required to make sure that these decisions do, for instance, preserve economic resources, maintain public health, and provide national security. The decision making process requires a wealth of information in order to achieve efficient results. Public organisations typically acquire great amounts of data generated by public services. However, the vast amount of data stored in public organisations’ databases may be one of the main reasons for inefficient decisions made by public organisations. Processing vast amounts of data and extracting accurate information are not easy tasks. Although technology helps in this respect, for example, the use of decision support systems, it is not sufficient for improving decisions to a significant level of assurance. The research proposed using data mining to improve results obtained by decision support systems. However, more considerations are needed than the mere technological aspects. The research argues that a complete data quality framework is needed in order to improve data quality and consequently the decision making process in public organisations. A series of surveys conducted in seven public organisations in Abu Dhabi Emirate of the United Arab Emirates contributed to the design of a data quality framework. The framework comprises elements found necessary to attain the quality of data reaching decision makers. The framework comprises seven elements ranging from technical to human-based found important to attain data quality in public organisations taking Abu Dhabi public organisations as the case. The interaction and integration of these elements contributes to the quality of data reaching decision makers and hence to the efficiency of decisions made by public organisations. The framework suggests that public organisations may need to adopt a methodological basis to support the decision making process. This includes more training courses and supportive bodies of the organisational units, such as decision support centres, information security and strategic management. The framework also underscores the importance of acknowledging human and cultural factors involved in the decision making process. Such factors have implications for how training and raising awareness are implemented to lead to effective methods of system development

MEASURING FACTORS INFLUENCING THIQA PATIENT LOYALTY TO OUTPATIENT MEDICAL SERVICES: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN THE EMIRATE OF ABU DHABI

The need to establish factors that influence the occurrence of a reduced rate of patient satisfaction and loyalty has attracted the attention of many healthcare and marketing scholars in recent years. Most of the hospitals managed by Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA) in Abu Dhabi have registered a decrease in the number of patients holding Thiqa insurance cards seeking outpatient care services, despite the fact that the Thiqa insurance plan is considered the preeminent insurance plan in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi for nationals of the United Arab Emirates. Therefore, this study is dedicated to evaluating issues that have inhibited the growth of satisfaction and loyalty among Thiqa patients and identifying factors that could enhance the retention of current customers. Correcting these factors would not only help hospital managements to enhance the excellence of care services they deliver to patients, but also provide financial benefits to these care facilities. The data in this study was collected via the use of structured questionnaires from 413 participants. The demographic characteristics of the respondents – such as marital status, age, gender, occupation, educational level, and frequency of visits – were taken into account as control variables during the data analysis process. The reliability of the questions to be included in the questionnaires was determined through the application of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and confirmatory factor analysis testing. Additionally, the SmartPLS 3.0 technique was applied to enhance the examination of data collected from participants, because it can provide graphical presentations of data through the application of strategies such as partial least squares-prediction-oriented segmentation, importance-performance map analysis (IPMA), and complex bootstrapping routines. The results of this research can be used to confirm the existence of a positive relationship between patient satisfaction and loyalty. To that end, facilitating the development of patient satisfaction will eventually lead to the promotion of patient loyalty. The results show that Thiqa patients are considered satisfied and loyal; however, they did not indicate that they were “very” satisfied (which equates to a score of five for all constructs) except for with regard to the cleanliness of the waiting areas. This indicates a potential risk that patients will be lost to competitors. The highest construct that scored high in satisfaction was tangibility, followed by patient-physician relationship, while satisfaction with the waiting time which is the time that patient entered the waiting area until leaving the hospital was last, with moderate satisfaction. The results revealed that most of the patients from Abu Dhabi are employed and married, and hence SEHA hospitals should consider these groups as the main consumers of their care services. Regarding the frequency of visits, 42.4% of the patients had visited SEHA hospitals more than five times, while only 10.7% had visited the hospitals once. The IPMA for patient satisfaction and loyalty indicated that the patient-physician relationship recorded the highest performance score, while the service quality, followed by hospital image, produced the highest score for importance. Thus, increasing the satisfaction rate of married patients will enable these hospitals to strengthen their image, and hence contribute to increasing patient loyalty. This study determined through hypothesis testing that service quality, word of mouth, and patient-physician relationship have a positive impact on patient satisfaction and an indirect effect on patient loyalty. In addition, hospital image has a positive direct impact on both patient satisfaction and loyalty and the partial mediation effect on loyalty. The results also showed that waiting time satisfaction had no impact on patient satisfaction and had no moderation effect on the relationship between patient satisfaction and patient loyalty. On the other hand, switching costs had a positive effect on patient loyalty but had no moderation effect on the relationship between patient satisfaction and patient loyalty. Another finding of this research is that there was a direct positive impact of patient satisfaction on patient loyalty. Recommendations to SEHA management for improving the results were discussed in depth. Although the objectives of the research were met, several limitations remain; these were elaborated upon and provided recommendations for further research

Assessing information value for harnessing knowledge needed for improving decision-making and effectiveness of a government organisation: A Case study of Abu Dhabi Police Force

Due to many adverse consequences of poor decision making in organisations there is a need to focus on the quality of information and knowledge. This research focuses on how to obtain and use, or “harness” knowledge from information in improving organisational decision-making in a civil protection/security organisation to become effective and enter an organisational wide learning spiral. This is necessary in order to gain a high degree of intuitiveness and intelligence and to be effective. The researcher explores how information-knowledge can be processed and converted into deeper level knowledge, while at the same time how to get decision makers to codify knowledge in order to help them to externalise it. In order to achieve this, the “information-space” model was used to show the information-to-knowledge dynamic journey. The research involved using quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative approach is used to obtain computable results from key decision-makers, such as senior workers, and test a model derived from the literature. Seventeen hypotheses were proposed based on theory to evaluate the proposed model. Primary data was collected during the empirical phase of the research from 135 respondents. A structural equation model was used and included exogenous and endogenous latent constructs. On the other hand, a use of qualitative research helped to obtain deeper insights into the use of information and knowledge in decision making. It was underpinned by several propositions and its aim was to expose the role of information-knowledge and the creation of a learning organisation. The results of the quantitative approach revealed that twelve hypotheses are positively significant. Two hypotheses have a significant negative impact on other constructs. Additionally, three hypotheses are non-statistically significant. The results reveal some very interesting insights, such as that demographic factors, such as age, level of education, gender, work experience and level of authority, have a significant impact on problem solving and decision making. In terms of type of information, the proprietary and common sense information types have more significance for solving problem and decision making. But, much to the researcher’s surprise, the public information and personal information played a very minor role. On the other hand, the results of the qualitative data collection show how key decision makers made decisions and gained a certain degree of intuition from it. Therefore, this research has met its objective in helping towards improvement in a civil protection/security organisation to become a learning organisation and help it to enter a learning spiral and make continual improvement. Hence, the researcher succeeds in making suitable recommendations to a number of different stakeholders, in particular the civil protection/security organisations to (i) to develop their management and specialist personnel, and, (ii) to have the necessary information management strategy in place that would harness information and help towards (iii) creating an effective and robust knowledge management strategy