Manual process productivity measurement: for Pre-registration Department in University of Missouri Healthcare

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] In the healthcare industry, it is often hard to measure productivity, because the input and the output of the process may be difficult to distinguish and may have different units of measurement. Based on previous research, it was found that there are some specific indicators that can be selected so as to reflect productivity. However, there was no solid support to show how the other functional indicators (such as the class of labor intensity or the index of work load) can be defined. In this study, a simulation tool was used to identify the metrics for productivity in a pre-registration department at an academic health center. Based on the results of the simulation and on the follow-up statistical analysis, a positive correlation between the chosen indicators and productivity was found and the complexity of the manual process was investigated and analyzed to provide conclusions about the applicability of the simulation tool to the preregistration processes commonly used in healthcare.