An efficient health care system saves time, money, and human energy, and ultimately
better serves patients in a more timely way. There are many ways to improve efficiency,
including ensuring services are provided by the most appropriate health professionals,
eliminating unnecessary paperwork, and performing the steps in a care process in
parallel instead of sequentially.
Improvement methods that have been used in business and manufacturing sectors for
years are now being successfully used in Saskatchewan to increase efficiency in our
health care system:
Operations research
Operations research (OR) is a hybrid of industrial engineering and management science
from the business world that provides a new tool for looking at health system issues
and testing solutions. It offers a valuable, structured approach by which to analyze
patient flow and system capacity issues.
OR methods were originally used in settings such as manufacturing plants, where the
production and distribution of materials can be readily predicted and controlled.
The science had to be adapted for use in service industries such as banks or gas
stations where customers appear to arrive randomly, choose one or more of the many
services offered, and stay for varying lengths of time.
Further changes have enabled planners to use OR to address the complex patient flow
and staffing problems inherent in health care systems. People arrive from a number
of entry points, with a variety of medical conditions-some more complicated than
others-and they may see one or more health care providers in the course of their
treatment. Physical (hospital size and number of beds) and economic issues (health
care funding, staffing) add to the health care system's complexity.
OR effectively analyzes how a system currently operates, measures the key components
and steps in that system, uses computer software to analyze data, and develops simulation
models to quickly test the effectiveness of several "what if" improvement scenarios.
The Health Quality Council has applied operations research to improve efficiency
in a couple of settings:
To read about a project to improve efficiency in emergency departments in Saskatoon
and Regina, click here.
To read about improving access to speech and language pathology services in Prairie
North Health Region, click
here.
To read articles on operations research that appeared in the Summer 2005 edition
of the Health Quality Council's newsletter, QReview,
click here.
