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The MVP believes that many of the problems confronting the nation’s health care delivery system have their roots in the inability or unwillingness of all parties (health care providers, payers, government) to collaborate in addressing inefficiencies in the way health care is delivered. In other production and service industries the quality and cost of the products and services produced are largely determined by the operations that are used to produce those goods and services. This well-established reality has been largely absent from the health care system. The problems created have a tangible impact, day-in and day-out, on both those who seek health care services as well as those that provide them. ED overcrowding, ambulance diversion, boarding of patients needing acute care services, stress on the workforce, inadequate quality of care and poor financial performance all can be attributed, at least in part, to operational inefficiencies. Just as operations is at the core of the problems faced by the health care system, so too it represents the path to improving the system to meets its goals of providing high quality services at the lowest possible cost. Periodically, this website will present the views, opinions and perspective of MVP faculty on major policy issues affecting the health care system and their relationship to operations management, that is, the way health care is delivered. In this first of a series of policy positions on health care issues, the MVP presents its views on the problem of ED Overcrowding in Massachusetts - Broadening the Quality Chasm in Health Care. The article analyzes the problem in the context of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, and the six aims the report sets out for a 21st century health care system. The MVP contends that the inability to address the problem of ED overcrowding violates each of the aims set out by the IOM and that the problem will only be resolved by applying OM principles and practices and Variability Methodology to the hospital care delivery system. Although the focus of the article is Massachusetts, it has relevance to ED overcrowding in every other state. We welcome your comments and feedback on the article.
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