Variation in the Capacity and Demand in Healthcare Operations - Essay Example

Healthcare Operation Management: PHAMACY DEPARTMENT Name: Institution: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Part 1 3 The Distribution cycle 5 Managing Capacity 6 Managing Demand 7 Calculations 8 Managing and forecasting patient demand 8 Gather Information 9 Examine the Historical Trends 9 Part 3 10 Productivity calculation 12 Measuring Activity 13 Conclusion 13 References 14 PHAMACY DEPARTMENT Part 1 Healthcare spending across the world’s economies continues to grow along with patients’ expectations. By contrast, the sector still fails to raise its productivity targets of making healthcare accessible and affordable to the entire public. Most hospital systems remain venerable on improving management hospitals as they develop strategies in meeting the institutional challenges. Although, increased healthcare operational management has made a contributed so match on the quality of services offered in most of the public and private health providers. It still has the potential to contribute while creating effectively and cost-efficiently delivering health care services, something that is results from good hospital operational management. In establishing a clear relationship between management and other indicators of firm performance, for example sales growth and company survival rates, with the main focus considered to be whether there is a similar relationship between hospital management and hospital performance. In determining this, it is important that health system evaluation is conducted applying the management measurement tools to different hospitals in different countries. For every research conducted, definatly shows reveals that higher quality management remains just as vital in public services and ultimately leads to reduced death rates cases in NHS hospitals. Organization’s operational function concerns getting things done. Understanding this we realize that operational management is vital as it is responsible in managing most of the organization’s resources. One of the major concerns in improving healthcare management quality, when it regards service delivery in is patient’s flow and resource allocation. From a clinical perspective, patient flow represents the progression of the patients’ health status. Understanding the patients flow offers the insight knowledge useful to healthcare providers, administrators, and the patients in regard to the medical needs associated with medical concerns for instance disease progression or recovery status. It is equally important to understand patients flow as it is required to support health care facility operational activities, from an operational perspective, can be thought of the movement of patients’ flow, which further can be a set of locations in a health care system. Effective resource distribution and capacity planning are part of the subjected upon patient flow since patient flow in the aggregate is equated to the demand for healthcare services. The motivation behind the increased need in knowing patients flow is brought about by the relative changes witnessed health care operations. The increased concept among healthcare providing institutions to outperform close rivals in the industry, management in health care operations matches with the supply of merchandise or service, and is often viewed to be an operational problem. In a manufacturing environment, inventory is used to respond to fluctuations in demand for supplies. However, it is never possible to investor healthcare services. In this case, it is important that capacity therefore meets the expected demand. In a situation where capacity is greater than demand, resources are often underutilized and costs are high (Parente, 2005). Under this circumstance, idle staff, equipment or facilities increase organizational costs without increasing the generated revenue. It is therefore evident, that in case of lower capacity than the expected demand, patients will have to experience an increased waiting time or alternatively seek for these services with other provider. In a move to match capacity to demand, organizations need to develop demand influencing mechanism. For instance, pricing and promotional activities are part of the strategies that can be employed in influencing demand and in demand timing. On the contrary, most of the strategies applied fail to deliver when use in healthcare organizations. The diagram below illustrates an operation management scheduling process in a clinical set up. The Distribution cycle Source: Singer, (2001) Information systems have a critical role in healthcare management and system operations. It is under this basis that medical institutions enjoy the automated patient data-recording which may involve billing and receivables collection efforts. This is a business practice that enables the healthcare institutions record; maintain patient’s information that is useful to both internal and external reviews. Similarly, there are other entities. Part 2 Managing Capacity The healthcare industry has been investigating different strategies to manage patient capacity with a view to enhance efficiency and productivity, thus adding value of the service provided (Lib, 2007). The common method applied include daily work shift scheduling for doctors and nurses, patients participation, creating adjustable capacity for instance physical resource within the hospital such as beds and room allocation and so forth. Part of the methods applied has proved to be successful. The capacity management for instance, has been on strategy that reasonably successful when handled one resource at a time. On the other hand, when a facility operates with a multiple loopholes creates increased complexity aspects. Managing Demand While it remains common to manage capacity, this is internal to a service provider with thinking that demand is external and hence cot controllable by the providing institution, increasing number of service firms work in addressing demand, some of the demand management strategies that include demand portioning, offering incentives for the price of one while promoting off-peak demand in keeping the patients flow going (Kaandorp, 2007). The main resources in the hospital are considered to include, doctors, nurses, operating rooms, laboratory and so forth. On the other hand, variables that are critical in defining capacity of resources include: a) Number of surgeries per doctor per day which can be performed b) Hours of operation in a day c) Average stay of a patient d) Days of the week for operations In our situation we draw a parallelism, in which we define our base case as follows: Number of doctors = 12 Number of surgeries conducted per doctor on each day = 3 Operating rooms = 4 Operating room or hours per day = 9 Beds that were available = 100 Average stay for each patient = 3 days Five days of surgery per week operating schedule Calculations Weekly capacity of doctors = 12*3 = 36 per day * 5 days = 180 per week Weekly capacity of OR = 4*9 = 36 per day *5 = 180 per week Weekly capacity of beds = 100*(5/3) =167 per week In this case, the calculations illustrated above result in the weekly system capacity of 167 patients with the beds marked as the disadvantage, considering that minimum figure of 180,180 and 167. Managing and forecasting patient demand Demand management in the health sector is all about understanding the patients demand. This type of process should put more emphasis on the use of planning, as well as forecasting the skills to make sure that the patients get suitable care that they deserve in the first place and in the required setting. This is not all about the management of the referral numbers in the hospital. Forecasting the demand future is a very critical concept that needs to be addressed with a lot of care. This is because it can be a daunting challenge mostly when the technological changes as well as the level of payments produce fast, staged shifts in the demand service (Parente, 2005). A healthy and thoroughly taken demand forecast is an essential means for any firm to improve and perfect as well as meet the society’s needs in addition capitalize on the given opportunities to be able to strengthen the organization’s bottom line and the given financial prospects. A flourishing demand forecast has got two main objectives: identifying the existing key variables which underlies the healthcare services demand at a given service area and to recognize how and why the above variables might transform over a given period of time. Accomplishing the above objectives needs an organized process that will ensure that all aspects of the potential demand are evaluated. By the use of a nine –step process one is able to come up to develop a database and outline for assessing key variables as well as testing the given assumptions in addition, this act as a basis of providing the needed service on the forecasted demand (Lib, 2007). Gather Information The collected information must reflect the present situation of the given services that you are willing to look at. The utilization of inpatient can be assessed in many ways this include the age of the patients, the major service, product line are also the combination of all these ways. The information collected should include the patient’s levels of activity as well as the throughput actions for example the duration of visit and the length of stay at the hospital. It is therefore advisable to make comparison of your information sources with other possible sources to help in identifying the most appropriate demand information. Examine the Historical Trends By analyzing three year information to be able to recognize the key trends in the given service that you are willing to include in your forecast. Come up with ratios that will prove to be important in the end. Another key element is noting the changing information classification schemes (Lib, 2007).Being able to recognize the main demand drivers based on the population may include the growth as well as aging of the population, the changing technology effects among many others. Demand factors that are specific to a certain service as well as those affecting the provider level demand should be examined as well. Factors that causes or influences a particular demand should be assessed with a lot of care to make sure that all min demand drivers are considered and the relationship between the given demand driver and the service are well understood.This kind of benchmarks provide a reference point for understanding the degree of which the given demand trends in the healthcare service are compatible with the larger market area (Cheang, 2003). The most appropriate trends of any market place include the use of rates, the treatment protocols and the performance measure as compared to the market. Without proper benchmarks one could easily make assumptions that the current trends in your area of service will be able to continue in the future. When in real sense may have shifted towards other norms that are reported elsewhere. Part 3 Healthcare management is always concern of better ways of improving production capacity aimed at improving operational efficiency. Hence it is important to compare different capacities of different resources within a single hospital system in reaching system efficiency measures, while adding value to the healthcare service offered. This will definitely offer insight which is important for managerial situation in the institution. It is important to ome up with a model that that imitate the current provable market information and one that clearly projects these trends. Data from the past should be used to come up with reasonable assumptions concerning the present conditions for the main demand drivers. If the selected model cannot imitate the current conditions then it’s not advisable to use it to predict the coming future. Table showing the productivity Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday TOTAL Demand 540 715 830 805 810380 3700 Capacity 660 540 720 720 380 3020 Activity 540 445 570 555 280 2390 TOTAL BACKLOG 480 750 1010 1260 1790 Graphical representation of the Demand, Capacity and The Activities Productivity calculation In measuring capacity, multiply the achieved number of equipment against time required to the people with necessary skills to use it. The capacity involves resources available to finish this work. This consists of equipment and healthcare providers’ hours available to attend to patients. For example, if 2 treatment equipments take 480 minutes each on the required session time, then the ultimate session time would be; 2*480 = 960 minutes of capacity each day. So for 40 minutes to process the capacity = 960minutes / 40 = 24 patients. Measuring Activity Activity presents the actual work carried out by staff this will include time used on observing patients and time used liaising with workmates. To realize the activity we multiply the number of patients processed through bottleneck by time in minutes used per patient. For instance, if 100 patients are processed within 20 minutes for each of them = 2000 minutes on a daily basis. However, measure of activity does not ideally reflect demand or capacity. Conclusion Variation in the capacity and demand is one of the major issues that affect healthcare operations. In this event bottlenecks determine the rate at which this process works, consequently the healthcare operational team will always be at catch-up-mode. As a result an estimate of demand, capacity and backlog is more likely to increase opportunity with an eventual betterment of the operations. The measure of demand, capacity, backlog and activity resolves capacity setbacks. On the other hand a wide comprehension of the four measures promotes throughput through reduction and variation of capacity and demand. There are various strategies that that will aid in resolving numerous constraints for instance reduction of waiting times. This is a characteristic shift of in backlog of patients. Another key strategy is patient’s list hence eliminate the mismatch between the discrepancy in demand and capacity to embrace a timely manner in selection of the right people and equipment. References Cayirli, T and Veral, E.(2003). Outpatient Scheduling in Health Care: A Review of Literature. Production and Operations Management , 12 (4): 519–549. . Cheang, B. H. (2003). Nurse Rostering Problems—A Bibliographic Survey. European Journal of Operational Research , 151 (1): 447–460. Gupta, D. S. (2006). Performance Metrics for Advanced Access . Journal of Healthcare Management , 51 (4):246. Lib, R. L. (2007). Reducing Healthcare Costs with Supply Chain best practices. Retrieved December 13th, 2011, from http://www.motorola.com/web/Business/Products/_ChannelDetails/_Documents/_StaticF iles/Healthcare-Industry-Brief-0610.pdf?localeId=33 Singer, I. A. (2001). Advanced Access: A New Paradigm in the Delivery of Ambulatory Care Services. Care Services: National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems Parente, D. H. (2005). A Pre-Post Comparison of Service Operational Efficiency and Patient Satisfaction Under Open Access Scheduling. Health Care Management Review , Vol. 30(3): 220–228. Read More