Reducing surgical cancellations: a successful application of Lean Six Sigma in healthcare.

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic emphasises the need to use healthcare resources efficient and effective to guarantee access to high-quality healthcare in an affordable manner. Surgical cancellations have a negative impact on these. We used the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology to reduce cardiac surgical cancellations in a University Medical Center in the Netherlands, where approximately 20% of cardiac surgeries were being cancelled.

An intelligent real-time scheduler for out-patient clinics: A multi-agent system model.

Scheduling of resources and patients are crucial in outpatient clinics, particularly when the patient demand is high and patient arrivals are random. Generally, outpatient clinic systems are push systems where scheduling is based on average demand prediction and is considered for long term (monthly or bimonthly). Often, planning and actual scenario vary due to uncertainty and variability in demand and this mismatch results in prolonged waiting times and under-utilization of resources.

[Health care claims per medical specialty in the Netherlands: a 10-year overview].

Objective: To analyse the quantity and size of health care claims per medical specialty in the past 10 years.

Design: Descriptive, evaluative and comparative study.

Method: Anonymised damage claim data from Centramed and MediRisk were used for this study.

Integral patient scheduling in outpatient clinics under demand uncertainty to minimize patient waiting times.

This study addressed the problem of scheduling walk-in patients in real time. Outpatient clinics encounter uncertainty in patient demand. In addition, the disparate departments are locally (department-centric) organized, leading to prolonged waiting times for patients.

[More and higher claims for damages: analysis of claims for damages in Dutch hospital care 2007-2016].

Objective: To investigate the number and extent of claims concerning hospital care at a national level, thereby affording insight to the profession.

Design: A quantitative, descriptive and comparative study.

Method: We used anonymised data on all claims for damages from regular hospital care that were submitted to Centramed and MediRisk between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2016.