Università Roma Tre

Lecture notes provided by instructor and uploaded on Moodle web site.

Introduction to Operations Management in Healthcare Systems. Definition of production systems and processes. The healthcare enterprise as a system. Key aspects and objectives in the management of healthcare services and systems.

Fundamentals of Process Economics. Classification of industrial costs (investment and operating costs, fixed and variable costs, direct and indirect costs, depreciation costs). Calculation of unit service cost and definition of Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRGs). Cost-Volume-Profit analysis. Make-or-buy decisions.

Process Analysis and Design. Resource characterization (cycle time, availability, capacity, utilization, etc.). Mapping and analysis of deterministic processes. Little's Law. Key performance measures in healthcare operations management. Resource dimensioning for capacity. Resource dimensioning under stochastic conditions. Characterization of process time variability. Flow variability and its propagation, G/G/1 and G/G/m queues, tandem networks. Application examples. Dimensioning of ambulance fleets and operating theaters. Fundamentals of process quality management.

Management of Capital Goods and Equipment. Investments in capital equipment. Choice between alternative machinery and equipment replacement decisions. Elements of equipment reliability and maintenance.

Operational Process Management. Capacity management and adjusting capacity to meet demand. Activity scheduling.

Materials Management. Basic concepts in inventory management. Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) and inventory management methods: reorder point and periodic review systems. Safety stock, single-period inventory model. Lot-for-lot requirements management, ABC analysis.

Elements of Investment Planning, Evaluation, and Management. Structure of a feasibility study. Introduction to investment profitability analysis methods. Elements of project management.

Practical Applications.

Lecture notes distributed by the instructor, uploaded to the Moodle platform.