STUDY AND ANALYSIS OF PATIENT FLOW IN HEALTH CARE SECTOR USING ISM APPROACH

Abstract

Today, due to increased competition among the hospitals to provide better services to their customers in order to achieve the goal of customer satisfaction, a number of hospitals are making strategies to enhance patient fiow such as coordinating the arrival and discharge of patients undergoing elective procedures and transferring of the patient from emergency department to the other hospital units. Smoothing the patient flow in and out of hospitals can help in reducing overcrowding, avoid delays, and prevent poor handling, all of which can get even worse as more of the people gain access to insurance coverage and care. In healthcare, patient flow is defined as the movement of patients from beginnieg of the treatment till the treatment is completed. Supply chain management is the backbone of any organization. it is about managing the flow of goods or services from the point of origin to point of consumption. Health care sector includes not only flow of drugs, pharmaceuticals, medical equipments, health aid devices, blood products and vaccines but also of patients. Patients have to move from one department to another within the hospital or from one hospital to another for their treatment. Managing and designing this flow of patient is one of the issues in Healthcare supply chain management and managing the flow of patient from one hospital to another is the weakest spot. During this transition from one hospital to another patient referral decision is the key decision which will affect the overall cost and quality of healthcare patient receives. The work incorporated in this literature is an effort which has been put to aid in patient referral decision and help in selection of hospital from diflèrent private hospitals available. For this different factor that affects the patient referral decision has been identified from literature review and experts opinion. In the evaluation stage, ISM approach has been applied for identifying the relationships among the factors which define any problem. ISM approach starts from identifiing the variables or factors. Then a relation is chosen among factors. Alter deciding the relation, a structural selfinteraction matrix (SSlM) is obtained through a pairwise comparison of variables. SSIM is now transformed into a reachability matrix (RM) and followed by transitivity check. After transitivity check, final reachability matrix is obtained. Then, level partitioning of factors is done, and an extraction of the structural model called ISM is derived. Alter the successful development of the - model through the ISM, MICMAC analysis is done. In ISM the indirect relationships between the &ctors are not revealed. Thereibre MICMAC is required to further improve the ISM evaluating the indirect relationships. Based on the driving and dependence power of Fàctors, MICMAC divides the làctors on the four quadrants, each quadrant having their own relative importance. Hence, it gives an idea about which factors to give more importance for the successful patient refërral and helping hospital organizations to take effective and sound decisions.