Operations Research For Patient. Centered Health Care Delivery. Proceedings Of The XXXVI International Orahs Conference

The most difficult part of making decisions in the health care field on all levels (national, regional, institutional, patient) is linked to the very complexity of the system itself, to the intrinsic uncertainty involved and its dynamic nature. This requires not only the ability to analyze and interpret a large amount of information but also arrange it so that it becomes a cognitive base for appropriate decisionmaking. Operations research, like other methods of statistical and economic-related quantitative analysis, supplies these decisions making tools and methodology. Decisions in the health care field are subjected to many challenges and constraints: fast change and uncertain outcomes, aging population, increasing citizen expectations, equity considerations and limited resources. The XXXVI ORAHS Conference, held at the University of Genoa in 2010, offers an innovative point of view in answering these questions, the patient one. Much of the present user dissatisfaction regarding healthcare services comes from the discrepancy in the people's needs and the system's answers. While the user has a broad formulated question, the system's answer is fragmented. The book presents a selection of the 115 papers presented at ORAHS2010 by participant researchers coming from 23 countries. Following the feature point of ORAHS, the book focuses on application to concrete situations. In particular, it addresses health policies, operating theatre planning and design, home-care modelling, logistics in health care, capacity planning, what-if and simulation analysis.