APPLICATION OF OPERATION REASEARCH IN HOSPITAL

MANAGEMENT

INTRODUCTION

Operations Research for Health Care (ORHC) focuses on the development and use of
operations research in health and health care. The journal publishes high-quality operations
research approaches to problems in health care from OR researchers and practitioners. ORHC
encourages contributions related to typical problem areas of health care such as: logistics,
finance and management accounting, policy, logistics and architecture as well as hospitals,
practices, and care (including home care and long term care).

Typical topics are therefore: forecasting, capacity planning, risk assessment, supply
chain management, long term care, home care, location and allocation, and appointment
planning, among others. The health care industry is one of the worlds largest and fastest-
growing industries. The largest emerging markets such as China and India might be expected
to enjoy competitive advantage of medical tourism. The healthcare industry in India is facing
increasing pressure to improve quality but also to reduce costs. In the heat and pressure of
competition, it is important to build an organization that drives change quickly.

Another important point was that generally there was a feeling among the doctors and
nurses that there was nothing to improve in the hospital, especially in Indian Healthcare
sector . Generally, improvement activities in hospitals, especially in India, are rarely based on
the industrial engineering tools and techniques. This is due to the fact that there is a lack of
interaction among the engineering institutions and healthcare sectors. The study shows that
industrial engineering tools could be effectively used in the healthcare industry as well. Since
industrial engineering tools and techniques are not wide-spread in hospitals, quality
improvement initiatives could be facilitated with academic partnership or research.

OPERATIONS RESEARCH IN HEALTHCARE

Systems Navigator implements Operations Research (OR) technology in the
healthcare sector by introducingHospital Navigator.

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 Hospital Navigator improves patient flows through Operations Research and offers
clinical solutions from commercial "know how".

WHAT ARE OPERATIONS RESEARCH TECHNOLOGIES?

There are many ways in which management science and Operations Research can use
information to study and improve business processes. Foremost amongst a range of
techniques that we use are those of discrete-event simulation and systems optimization.

DISCRETE-EVENT SIMULATION

Discrete-event simulation is particular suited to the representation of hospital services,

because of its ability to reflect the non-steady stat behaviors that typify clinical demand. As
its name suggests, discrete-event simulation treats each arrival, usually that of a patient, into a
model of a hospital system as a specific individual and records the experiences of that
particular individual as he or she passes through the processes within the model. In this way,
the queues and associated delays that occur at times of peak demand are clearly revealed, in
precise statistical terms.

SYSTEMS OPTIMIZATION

Computer based optimization techniques enhance the value of outputs from a

discrete-event simulation model. They allow you to define a performance target and then
perform an automated sequence of simulation experiments that, with each successive
iteration, through a methodical adjustment of the key dependant variables, converge upon the
optimal settings for the system.

IMPROVING PATIENT FLOWS THROUGH OPERATIONS

RESEARCH
Hospitals are complicated places. Every day they must face the problem of how best
to meet complex, often rapidly changing clinical demands with the finite resources that are
actually available to them. Unlike many manufacturing and service industries, few hospitals
can draw upon the proven capabilities of Operations Research based technologies to guide
them with capacity planning and with their daily operations.

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 At Hospital Navigator we study the logistics of hospital services. We use management
science and Operations Research techniques to enable hospitals to treat patients better, to
meet performance targets and yet contain costs.

CLINICAL SOLUTIONS FROM COMMERCIAL "KNOW HOW"

We use "know how" gained in the commercial world through Systems Navigator
projects to build computer based simulations that mimic real life clinical activities. Systems
Navigator numbers many prestigious organizations, such as Shell, Nestl, ABM Amro, Total,
the UK Home Office and Rockwell Automation among its clients.

CONCLUSION

Our healthcare solutions enable doctors, nurses and managers to understand the
practicalities of how they deliver their services to patients. Hospital Navigator shows where
queues will form, how those queues will behave and how to eliminate them; what physical
resources, such as beds operating theatres, and imaging systems are needed and when; and
how to best organize the work of staff that delivers care.

REFERENCES

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19565110
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/operations-research-for-health-care/
http://www.systemsnavigator.com/sn_website/node/136
http://www.orms-today.org/orms-4-02/frmismanagement.html
http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.c.jmea.201502.16.html