PSCPF: planning, scheduling and control of patient flow

Abstract

Planning plays a vital role in directing the organizational efforts to achieve previously outlined goals. It represents an essential component of Operations Management (OM), establishing bases for meeting demands, and improving service-level and patient-value delivery (Drupsteen et al., 2013).In healthcare services, a failure in planning processes results in disconnection among sectors, lack of clearly envisioned goals, loss of focus on the patient's well-being, and many wastes, such as late deliveries of supplies, items returned or missing due to improper order management, limited and misused storage space, non-standardized procedures, difficulties in operating new equipment; imbalance of activity loads among employees, turnover due to conflicts and lack of motivation or goals, idleness and inefficiency. All these manifestations of an ineffective process planning impact negatively the value/work ratio. Moreover, the hospital management problems previously mentioned are current but not new; Graban (2009) points out that, in the United States, the Training Within Industry program detected similar problems in the year 1944.