A survey of health care models that encompass multiple departments

In this survey we review quantitative health care models to illustrate the extent to which they encompass multiple hospital departments. The paper provides general overviews of the relationships that exists between major hospital departments and describes how these relationships are accounted for by researchers. We find the atomistic view of hospitals often taken by researchers is partially due to the ambiguity of patient care trajectories. To this end clinical pathways literature is reviewed to illustrate its potential for clarifying patient flows and for providing a holistic hospital perspective

Taxonomic classification of planning decisions in health care: a review of the state of the art in OR/MS

We provide a structured overview of the typical decisions to be made in resource capacity planning and control in health care, and a review of relevant OR/MS articles for each planning decision. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, to position the planning decisions, a taxonomy is presented. This taxonomy provides health care managers and OR/MS researchers with a method to identify, break down and classify planning and control decisions. Second, following the taxonomy, for six health care services, we provide an exhaustive specification of planning and control decisions in resource capacity planning and control. For each planning and control decision, we structurally review the key OR/MS articles and the OR/MS methods and techniques that are applied in the literature to support decision making

Public Procurement of Innovation Diffusion: Exploring the Role of Institutions and Institutional Coordination

The role of the public agency as a pacer of private sector innovation has been emphasised over the recent years, especially in the context of the EU. The general ambition has been to encourage public agencies to actively stimulate private sector innovation by requesting innovation instead of procuring currently existing products. This has also triggered an increased interest among researchers and practitioners to identify examples of best practice where public agencies have successfully procured innovation. Rather than addressing this demand-oriented perspective this paper focuses on the public agency as an adopter of private-sector innovation, and how this mechanism can contribute to innovation in general. The theoretical point of departure is diffusion theory, with an emphasis on the role of institutions as identified in systemic approaches to innovation studies. A particular concern of this paper is those institutions that hinder or enable adoption of an innovation in an organisational context. The paper draws on an explorative case study looking at the introduction of a new catheter into the English National Health Service supply chain and its diffusion among NHS trusts in England. Different institutional factors are identified which have had an affect on the adoption and diffusion.public procurement; innovation diffusion; institutions; England

A global review of the expansion of multinational healthcare companies

There are some common patterns of expansion among healthcare multinational companies throughout the world. Many are diversifying away from just delivering healthcare to providing health insurance and other financial infrastructure

Stayin’ alive: The introduction of municipal in-patient acute care units was associated with reduced mortality and fewer hospital readmissions.

Background: Integrated care is seen as integral in combating the current and projected resource scarcity in the healthcare systems of developed economies. Previous research finds positive effects from implementing intermediate care but there is a lack of research on how this shift towards care integration has affected traditional quality indicators within healthcare, indicators such as mortality rates and hospital readmissions. We seek to contribute to the discourse by studying how the introduction of intermediate care in the form of municipal acute units (MAUs) in Norway has affected age adjusted mortality rates and hospital readmissions. Data and methods: In this retrospective cohort study we utilize yearly population-based registry data from 2010 to 2016, analysed with fixed-effects regressions. Data on the implementation, characteristics and localization of the MAUs were gathered by telephone during the implementation period. Data on mortality rates and hospital readmissions were collected from Statistics Norway and the Norwegian patient registry. Results: Our analyses finds that the introduction of MAU was associated with a statistically significant reduction in both aggregated mortality rates and hospital readmission rates. In depth analyses finds that our results are contingent upon the age of the patients treated at the MAUs and the clinical characteristics of the medical units themselves. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that the shift towards intermediate care through the introduction of MAUs has increased performance within the public healthcare sector in Norway. Our findings indicate that the introduction of MAU have had a positive public health impact by lowering the mortality and readmission rates for the oldest population cohort in Norway. Our findings suggests that countries with comparatively similar healthcare systems as Norway could achieve similar benefits from implementing intermediate care in the form of somatic medical institutions in the local communities.publishedVersio

Strategies for dynamic appointment making by container terminals

We consider a container terminal that has to make appointments with barges dynamically, in real-time, and partly automatic. The challenge for the terminal is to make appointments with only limited knowledge about future arriving barges, and in the view of uncertainty and disturbances, such as uncertain arrival and handling times, as well as cancellations and no-shows. We illustrate this problem using an innovative implementation project which is currently running in the Port of Rotterdam. This project aims to align barge rotations and terminal quay schedules by means of a multi-agent system. In this\ud paper, we take the perspective of a single terminal that will participate in this planning system, and focus on the decision making capabilities of its intelligent agent. We focus on the question how the terminal operator can optimize, on an operational level, the utilization of its quay resources, while making reliable appointments with barges, i.e., with a guaranteed departure time. We explore two approaches: (i) an analytical approach based on the value of having certain intervals within the schedule and (ii) an approach based on sources of exibility that are naturally available to the terminal. We use simulation to get insight in the benefits of these approaches. We conclude that a major increase in utilization degree could be achieved only by deploying the sources of exibility, without harming the waiting time of barges too much

Applications of Contemporary Management Approaches in Supply Chains

In today's rapidly changing business environment, strong influence of globalization and information technologies drives practitioners and researchers of modern supply chain management, who are interested in applying different contemporary management paradigms and approaches, to supply chain process. This book intends to provide a guide to researchers, graduate students and practitioners by incorporating every aspect of management paradigms into overall supply chain functions such as procurement, warehousing, manufacturing, transportation and disposal. More specifically, this book aims to present recent approaches and ideas including experiences and applications in the field of supply chains, which may give a reference point and useful information for new research and to those allied, affiliated with and peripheral to the field of supply chains and its management

Disaster preparedness in humanitarian logistics:A collaborative approach for resource management in floods

The logistical deployment of resources to provide relief to disaster victims and the appropriate planning of these activities are critical to reduce the suffering caused. Disaster management attracts many organisations working alongside each other and sharing resources to cope with an emergency. Consequently, successful operations rely heavily on the collaboration of different organisations. Despite this, there is little research considering the appropriate management of resources from multiple organisations, and none optimising the number of actors required to avoid shortages or convergence. This research introduces a disaster preparedness system based on a combination of multi-objective optimisation and geographical information systems to aid multi-organisational decision-making. A cartographic model is used to avoid the selection of floodable facilities, informing a bi-objective optimisation model used to determine the location of emergency facilities, stock prepositioning, resource allocation and relief distribution, along with the number of actors required to perform these activities. The real conditions of the flood of 2013 in Acapulco, Mexico, provided evidence of the inability of any single organisation to cope with the situation independently. Moreover, data collected showed the unavailability of enough resources to manage a disaster of that magnitude at the time. The results highlighted that the number of government organisations deployed to handle the situation was excessive, leading to high cost without achieving the best possible level of satisfaction. The system proposed showed the potential to achieve better performance in terms of cost and level of service than the approach currently employed by the authorities