A study of organizational alignment at a Boston area hospital and its effects on patient throughput in the peri-operative areas

Capacity is an ongoing issue when managing hospital resources. Looking at the hospital as a supply chain of care services provided to the patient enables us to better evaluate problems such as delays on a systems level. A Boston Area Hospital has been experiencing delays in the operating rooms when moving patients into the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU). As the different services of the hospital are inherently reliant upon each other, this issue cannot be isolated and resolved in this one hospital area. As this is the initial year of this research collaboration, the purpose of this work is to serve as a map of the surgical patient's pathway through the hospital, with emphasis on the patients that move through the PACU, and identify areas that merit further research and study. Reasons behind delaying factors have been identified through interviews of different members of the organization and direct observation. Applying a the congruence model in evaluating the alignment of objectives, resources, critical tasks and vision is a useful model for identifying potential areas of disconnect in the system.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Campbell, Sarah K. (Sarah Katharine)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Gabriel Bitran.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39516

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39516