La dirección de operaciones en un hospital de alta tecnología Medidas para incrementar la productividad y la eficiencia

Abstract

There is little scientific literature published about efficiency issues in the hospital management field in our environment. There is background of efficiency and effectiveness for a few specific clinical processes, but few are talking about the impact of complex processes management in hospitals. The purpose of this study is to investigate, analyse and interpret the results of a number of interventions applied in the area of inpatient management of acute diseases area in order to increase productivity and efficiency of the health care activity. Specifically, this thesis proposes to create surgical reception units to facilitate the hospitalization on the same day of the surgery, demand segmentation of the scheduled patients by creating short stay surgical units, standardize the management of admissions and discharges processes, and a tool to plan scheduled inpatients demand in order to adjust it to the available capacity in the hospital. All this requires a patient management system with an overview of the hospital and this means that it has to be centrally managed in certain aspects. According to the results found, the implementation of reception and short surgical stay units potentiated an increase in the percentage of patients admitted on the same day of the surgery, as well of patients who had a scheduled discharge. These units were useful to standardize the hospital processes of admission and discharge and, in turn, the average of presurgical stay was reduced. The decrease in the hospitalizations scheduled in the evening before the surgery without any clinical judgment liberated beds for patients admitted through the emergency department. This carried a reduction of inpatients pending of bed in the emergency room, facilitating the liberation of attention points for visit new emergency consultations. In turn, these reception and short surgical stay units allowed its closure during the weekend, generating savings in nurse hospital staff. In this regard, the demand of hospitalization beds for the scheduled patient was segmented, with the aim to accumulate the highest number of scheduled hospitalizations in polyvalent inpatient units for certain medical specialties. These units absorbed an important part of the scheduled hospitalizations and avoided last minute cancellations due to lack of bed, with the consequent loss of surgical resource. Also, this demand segmentation offered the possibility to plan what type of income could absorb the hospital, so through the surgical room committee the surgical sessions were conditioned according the patient type. So, demand was fit to available capacity and last minute cancellations of surgeries were also avoided. Overall the results found show the possibility to have a patient hospitalization management more flexible, agile and efficient, without altering the quality and clinical safety. In this thesis we have proposed two types of interventions, some involve continuous improvement aspects of the previous processes and others are related to disruptive processes, of total change of the previous hospital paradigm. In both cases the management team leadership is essential, especially in aspects of management change between the different professional groups to get them started without generating a conflict of interests or dysfunctions in the interventions that reduce its main aim: the improvement of productivity and efficiency.

Date of Award	30 May 2013
Original language	Spanish
Supervisor	Joan Escarrabill (Director), Alberto Jorge Jovell Fernandez (Director) & Josep Vaque Rafart (Tutor)