op man
...manufactured by medical supply companies. This makes quality assurance more challenging, as the production and consumption of the service is delivered at the same time. Also, service operations are subject to greater variability of inputs than typical manufacturing operations. For example, each patient must be diagnosed before they can be remedied. Operations management focuses on carefully managing the processes to produce and distribute products and services. Operations management is in regard to all operations within the organization. Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations. A great deal of focus is on efficiency and effectiveness of processes. Therefore, operations management often includes substantial measurement and analysis of internal processes. Ultimately, the nature of how operations management is carried out in an organization depends very much on the nature of products or services in the organization. The high cost of health care places a great burden on the competitiveness of many manufacturing and other businesses. The Boston University School of Management stated: “In response to cost-reduction pressures from corporate leaders, health care managers often respond in ways that negatively impact quality of care. Such responses fail to recognize a source of great waste in the health care delivery system: excessive variability in the processes used to provide care (2003).” There is a great deal of variability that is largely outside the control of health care managers: clinical variability (patients differ in the type and severity of their diseases, and similar patients respond differently to treatment), patient demand variability (patients arrive for treatment randomly over time), and professional variability (different providers treat similar patients in different ways). As cost-reduction pressures are increased, the tendency of managers is to seek cost savings in those areas that are easiest to control: the nature of the product delivered. This can result in approaches that reduce the quality of the product delivered. For example, shortened physician appointment times; or the substitution of effective but expensive drug A with inexpensive drug B, even when the latter leads to increased side effects. There is a potential for large savings by reducing variability in the processes used to deliver care. Process variability adds unnecessarily to costs and also reduces quality. If variability is reduced, peaks in demand, which stress the delivery system, w...