National Patient Flow Framework: An Ontological Patient-oriented Redesign
This study aims to redesign and measure patient satisfaction and treatment of the patient flow process. Based on ontology, it will redesign the core patient flow processes with the simultaneous introduction of a patient-oriented model that will conceptualise and implement this ontological framework. A gap regarding scientific, patient-oriented, measurable frameworks has been discovered and demonstrates the need for a new healthcare management framework. As the need for this new framework is identified, this study aims at fulfilling the following objectives:  A novel redesign of core transactions of the patient flow process, based on ontology, and its supporting patient-oriented information system, from being healthcare oriented to being patient oriented.  Implement this study’s conceptualisation (patient-oriented flow) in a novel beyond any doubt, way through the function of the supporting information system as well as its measures used for the ontological process redesign.  Improve efficiency in the healthcare system through competent management of institutional resources by providing a fertile framework for strategic cooperation among patients and healthcare providers.  Assist in the development and maintenance of measurable activity-based driven results that improve patient quality value added services, turning everyday healthcare acts into healthcare facts relevant to this study’s concept. Concluding, scientific contributions of this study include the discovery and redesign of the contemporary both conceptual and structural gaps in the patient flow process and the introduction of a measurable scientific, not practical, redesign through the enterprise ontology methodology. Finally, the implementation of a novel patient-oriented framework (OS), based on universal characteristics, that results to effective GP appointment, proper diagnosis and referral, economically traceable and structurally measurable, both qualitative and quantitative, hospital inflow-outflow as well as patient awareness and patient relations management.
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