Improvement and renewal of healthcare processes : results of an empirical research project

Abstract

Professionals in healthcare organizations, who generally produce high-quality work, commonly operate in isolation or locally. However, due to developments in society and legislation, healthcare organizations are forced to integrate healthcare activities, and achieve integral quality management, instead of suboptimal, local quality management. Eindhoven University of Technology set up a study in 11 Dutch healthcare organizations in the area of interface management. The study was performed in general and mental hospitals, and clinics for care and treatment of drug addicts. The research projects aimed to develop methods to achieve an improvement or a renewal of healthcare processes. Special attention was paid to the interfaces between departments and individual parts of the healthcare process. In this paper an outline is given of both the improvement and the renewal approach, results of three of the 11 case studies are presented (as an example) and the improvement and the renewal approach are compared with respect to healthcare processes. Author Keywords: Healthcare processes; Improvement; Industrial engineering view; Renewal Index Terms: health care quality; health care personne