Managing Financial Risk in a Clinical Setting Utilizing System Dynamics

摘要

Healthcare is a major topic of concern in the United States, and awareness of the difficulties facing the industry has risen in recent years. All of this attention to healthcare has captured the eye of the industrial engineering research community, and research in the field is growing rapidly. An example is the Center for Innovation in Healthcare Logistics at the University of Arkansas, an industrial engineering research center. The healthcare industry presents multiple opportunities for applications of traditional industrial engineering and engineering management methods capable of providing opportunities for enhancing the performance of healthcare organizations. In this presentation, the system dynamics simulation approach is applied to the financial operations of a healthcare clinic in order to explore potential effects of decisions and policies enacted by management at the clinic regarding staffing, reimbursement, and government interactions. The ramifications of various policies will be discussed in the vein of risk management to demonstrate the potential benefits gained from applying the system dynamics approach to healthcare organizations.