Handbook of Healthcare Analytics

Preface

Why another handbook on healthcare?

In developing the conceptual framework of this book, we interviewed an internationally acclaimed expert, who, like several others, articulated the need: “Operations Management researchers should be given a window into the reality of the weirdness of healthcare under a fee‐for‐service model (or other payment methods). Notably, hospitals more or less don't give two hoots about making people healthy; they are all about the margin and rejiggering services toward high‐margin services. Also, many hospitals simply do not have anyone on the floor with serious training in analytics beyond lean manufacturing; the horsepower is on the finance side, and with the payers not the providers.”

Provocative as the above quote was intended to be, in reality the situation is quite complex, and there is some truth to that frustration. Although physicians for the most part indeed intend to provide the best care for each patient, they are part of a larger entrenched organizational and cultural system where financial considerations (and other habitual procedures) and performance metrics sometimes do play an outsized role and have unintended consequences that may not be readily apparent. Our survey of existing handbooks on healthcare operations shows that although these references are in general quite elaborate about how quantitative‐modeling efforts may lead to improvements, actual widespread and sustainable benefits have been difficult to accomplish; ...