The purpose of this paper is to describe the importance of operations management to a health care organization. In addition, the author of this paper will provide a personal definition of what operations management means and why is important to a healthcare organization. According to the Institute of Operations Management The cost of providing fast, reliable health care is always an emotive issue, but it has been brought to the fore again via the Gershon report, which is challenging the established Health Care Supply Chain. As a precursor to more specific events that look at how operations management can help practitioners make best use of additional funding to improve patient care and enhance the working lives of Health Care Professionals. The essential healthcare management functions are organized into three major groups of activities governing, caring, and learning with a focus on reaching excellence in community healthcare. Within these activities, each system is described in terms of what it must do to make the whole system effective. Implementing and sustaining change is one of the most difficult tasks for any management -but change is a fact of life in any modern enterprise and, without the ability to manage change, no company can hope to survive it. Operations Managers addresses the practical issues that surround planning and implementing change, including motivating a business to change, engaging staff in the change process, determining performance measures and sustaining the benefits achieved in the initial change process. According to Stevenson (2002), operations management is the management of that part of an organization that is responsible for producing goods and/or services.
Operations management is that part of a business organization responsible for planning and coordinating the use of the organization's resources to convert inputs into outputs. The operations function is one of three
References: Henderson, M. D. (1995) Operations management in health care. Journal of health care finance. New York: Vol.21, Iss. 3; pg. 44, 4 pgs Stevenson, W. J. (2002). Operations management (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. The Institute of Operations Management. Management in the health care supply chain. Retrieved September 10, 2005, from http://www.iomnet.org.uk/