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Introduction

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Healthcare Service Management

Part of the book series: Health Information Science ((HIS))

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Abstract

A healthcare service system is complex in nature largely because of its interacted autonomous entities, such as patients and service providers. Partially due to this reason, a healthcare service system may exhibit certain complex phenomena, such as periodically emptying the queue for specific services, which may result in unreasonable service performance that is quite different from managers’ expectations. Therefore, proposing an approach to systematically understanding the healthcare services from a complex systems self-organizing perspective is of paramount importance in addressing many challenging healthcare service management problems, such as shortening long wait times, and figuring out the underlying reasons that account for the specific spatio-temporal patterns of wait times. This chapter first introduces a conceptual model for a healthcare service system with a brief review about its complex nature and the importance of the interactions between the factors and entities in the system. The commonly-faced healthcare service management problems in practice relating to wait times management are summarized. Then, it presents a data-driven complex systems modeling (D2CSM) approach, which includes the following four specific methods, i.e., Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)-based analysis, integrated prediction, service management strategy design and evaluation, and behavior-based autonomy-oriented modeling, to systematically understanding healthcare services and addressing the wait time management problems. Finally, this chapter introduces the profiles of the cardiac care system in Ontario, Canada, which is the research scenario in this book.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note: This figure was adapted from the open systems model [5, p. 90].

  2. 2.

    https://www.corhealthontario.ca/. Last accessed on April 11, 2019.

  3. 3.

    http://www.lhins.on.ca/home.aspx. Last accessed on April 11, 2019.

  4. 4.

    http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/index-eng.cfm. Last accessed on April 10, 2019.

  5. 5.

    https://maps.google.com/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Southwest University, Beibei, Chong Qing, China

    Li Tao

  2. Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Jiming Liu

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Tao, L., Liu, J. (2019). Introduction. In: Healthcare Service Management . Health Information Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15385-4_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15385-4_1

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