The entire study though being related with doctor’s visit for a flu shot, it is actually about operations management involving an examination of a primary care physician and the way the physician manages his or her work. The primary care physician assumed for this report has a very sound knowledge about operations management. However, the report investigates his or her skills based on his or her capabilities to avoid and manage the wastes. The learner visits the primary care physician and the whole study revolves around this journey. The journey is being described with a few flow charts on different aspects of the treatment procedure to examine the operations management standard of the physician.
The following flowchart shows the general conception, which people have about the visit process to a primary care physician. According to a general concept that is popular among masses, at the first stage, the doctor asks about the patients’ family history. It is also being shown in the flowchart. At this stage, when the doctor does not find anything related to the flu, the next stage, which the doctor follows is doing a quick test. The quick test namely “nasopharyngeal swab sample” is done to investigate influenza A or B virus. The positivity and negativity of the test will encourage the doctor to head for the next round of a primary care. In some cases, it is required to done testing in a specialized laboratory. This is required to investigate whether the patient is infected with Swine flu (H1N1) and Bird flu (H3N2). In the case of a specialized test, the doctor himself or herself can send specimens to the specialized laboratory (Donetto et al., 2015).
Figure 1: Flow Chart for General Perception of Process
(Source: created by author)
The flowchart as shown below indicates a few common wastes that doctors are committed with and result in the quality of care, which goes up against the process that is generally believed to be taking place in health settings. Unnecessary movements of patients for varieties of tests are one of the common practices. It is not that these movements are not required but, could be reduced. The learner’ primary care physician sends patients to a preferred laboratory for the test while these tests could also be done at a laboratory close to the patient’s residence. Patients are made to wait outside the clinics till the moment they are engaged meeting with medical representatives (MRs). In addition, office hours are limited and there is no separate time to do such activities. Doctors are not keen on looking at patients after when the visit time is over. There is no proactive as well as reactive approach being taken by doctors in a significant number of cases (Hamberger, Rhodes & Brown, 2015). These all make situation challenging for patients and they are left with nothing than to wait till doctors are available for the next appointment. As per the learner’s observation of circumstances in the laboratory, physicians are also engaged in practicing “over processing”. It means doing unnecessary tests, which could have been avoided. Patients need to undergo unnecessary movements because of an ineffective communication between different departments. These things just delay the process and harass the people. These movements could have been reduced, had there existed a collaborative approach between each one of the departments (Hamberger, Rhodes & Brown, 2015).
Figure 2: Flow Chart for the Process Actually Exist
(Source: created by author)
The healthcare setting of any format such as the primary care center or a hospital should deliberately head to achieve a few key targets to improve its operations management. Those key targets are (van Weel et al., 2018):
Cost: Cost of treatment matters to every income group. The high-income group holds the capacity to bear costlier treatments but, still, they seek to get the best offer comprising of competitive costs and a quality treatment. Those who belong to the middle-income groups, they are concerned about the quality of treatment and the cost. They affordability of treatment costs is up to a level. This is why they look to go with a selective list of clinical centers for the fulfillment of their needs and capacity.
Quality: It means the healthcare centers must be capable in offering the best possible service with the resources they have.
Speed: This could provide an edge to one healthcare setting over the others having more or less the similar physical, human and technological infrastructure. In that scenario, patients will only prefer visiting the center having faster operations as compared to others provided they are informed about these aspects and are also able to compare the diverse options.
Dependability: This is another very vital factor to attract patients. Service users at any level of income groups look for the best option they have at their level.
Flexibility: The ability to quickly adapt to the situation is termed as flexibility.
These key targets can be attained by applying a few techniques such as those mentioned in the flow chart. These are (Coyne, 2015):
Total Quality Management (TQM) and Six Sigma in Healthcare: The implementation of TQM and Six Sigma in healthcare settings must be supported by the active involvement of every single stakeholder. This would require auditing the entire operation to be able to identify the weak zones and appropriate alternative to every single flaw. Training and development programs will also be helpful to teach new skills and create expertise in the existing.
Lean Production: Lean principles can help to deliver quality treatments in an error-free and safe environment by also keeping the charges low. In addition, this would also help in managing the undesirable wastes that affect the quality of service.
Supply Chain Management: The value chain management in a healthcare setting is affected by many problems such as laborious manual processes, inaccurate and outdated data, and lack of visibility in critical and important information.
Figure 3: Flow Chart for the process that should exist
(Source: created by author)
The business or the service sector with which the learner’s doctor belonged to is plagued with many wastes that affect the quality of care. There are significant differences between what people generally perceive of healthcare settings and the facts. People generally rush to clinical centers when they need any primary care. They expect that their concerns will be addressed by quality physicians and in a safe environment; however, it is no so in some cases. The study has evidence of the fact. According to this study, there are commonly a few wastes that are generally found across clinical centers of any format. These are transportation, waiting, over processing, office hours, and motion.
These issues can be fought with strategic techniques such as those covered in (Figure 3: Flow Chart for the process that should exist). TQM and Six Sigma are one of those techniques, which require an active involvement of every stakeholder. Trainers will need to contribute to their training skills. Doctors will not be very careful with their service timings. Administration can modify policies related to office hours and so.
Lean Production can be used to sense the rising number of patients and thereby appropriately managing the bench strengths of physicians. If needed fresh recruitments need to be done to effectively fulfill the demand condition. This would help to manage wastes such as waiting, over-processing, and office hours.
The supply chain needs to be made robust as this would help to reduce or mitigate a few wastes like transportation and motion. Ineffective communication and coordination between doctors and staffs are one of the reasons for unnecessary movements within the healthcare premise. An effective management of supply chain would enable to have technologies and systems that are essentials for an effective coordination and communication between physicians and others such as nurses, and hence, for a reduced motion within the premise. An improved governance within the healthcare setting can help to reduce the unnecessary preferences of doctors.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this can be said that operations management in a healthcare setting has an influence of wastes, which could be brought down within the control provided that recommended solutions are implemented in practice. Recommended solutions are not the short-term way outs but rather a long-term, which require a leadership assistance of the administrative body of the healthcare setting.
|
Recommendations |
Timeframe |
Benefits to the Doctor |
|
TQM and Six Sigma |
A long-term process |
More patients will come due to the reduced operational cost and enhanced service quality |
|
Lean Production |
8-10 years |
It reduces wastes, improves efficiency, and increases productivity. Hence, the number of patients will increase and the rate of satisfied patients will also grow. |
|
Supply Chain Management |
10-12 years |
Communication will improve and hence, unnecessary movement within the premise will reduce. The doctor will be able to provide quality service at low costs. |
Table 1: recommendations
(Source: D’Andreamatteo et al., 2015)
References
Coyne, I. (2015). Families and health?care professionals’ perspectives and expectations of family?centred care: hidden expectations and unclear roles. Health expectations, 18(5), 796-808.
D’Andreamatteo, A., Ianni, L., Lega, F., & Sargiacomo, M. (2015). Lean in healthcare: A comprehensive review. Health policy, 119(9), 1197-1209.
Donetto, S., Pierri, P., Tsianakas, V., & Robert, G. (2015). Experience-based co-design and healthcare improvement: realizing participatory design in the public sector. The Design Journal, 18(2), 227-248.
Hamberger, L. K., Rhodes, K., & Brown, J. (2015). Screening and intervention for intimate partner violence in healthcare settings: Creating sustainable system-level programs. Journal of Women’s Health, 24(1), 86-91.
van Weel, C., Alnasir, F., Farahat, T., Usta, J., Osman, M., Abdulmalik, M., … & Tarawneh, M. (2018). Primary healthcare policy implementation in the Eastern Mediterranean region: Experiences of six countries. European Journal of General Practice, 24(1), 39-44.
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