Handbook of Healthcare Delivery Systems

With rapidly rising healthcare costs directly impacting the economy and quality of life, resolving improvement challenges in areas such as safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, timeliness, efficiency, and equity has become paramount. Using a system engineering perspective, Handbook of Healthcare Delivery Systems offers theoretical foundations, methodologies, and case studies in each main sector of the system. It explores how system engineering methodologies and their applications in designing, evaluating, and optimizing the operations of the healthcare system could improve patient outcomes and cost effectiveness.

The book presents an overview of current challenges in the healthcare system and the potential impact of system engineering. It describes an integrated framework for the delivery system and the tools and methodologies used for performance assessment and process improvement with examples of lean concept, evidence-based practice and risk assessment. The book then reviews system engineering methodologies and technologies and their applications in healthcare. Moving on to coverage of the design, planning, control and management of healthcare systems, the book contains chapters on 12 services sectors: preventive care, telemedicine, transplant, pharmacy, ED/ICU, OR, decontamination, laboratory, emergency response, mental health, food and supplies, and information technology. It presents the state-of-the-art operations and examines the challenges in each service unit.

While system engineering concepts have been broadly applied in healthcare systems, most improvements have focused on a specific segment or unit of the delivery system. Each unit has strong interactions with others and any significant improvement is more likely to be sustained over time by integrating the process and re-evaluating the system design from a holistic viewpoint. By providing an overview of individual operational sectors in the extremely complex healthcare system and introducing a wide array of engineering methods and tools, this handbook establishes the foundation to facilitate integrated system thinking to redesign the next generation healthcare system.

Yuehwern Yih is a Professor of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University, Indiana.