Industrial and Systems Engineering and Health Care: Critical Areas of Research

This document is in the public domain and may be used and reprinted with permission except those copyrighted materials that are clearly noted in the document. Further reproduction of those copyrighted materials is prohibited without the specific permission of copyright holders. None of the investigators has any affiliations or financial involvement that conflicts with the material presented in this report. ii Acknowledgments We would like to recognize the sustained help of Teresa Zayas-Cabán, the AHRQ Project Officer. We would also like to thank all reviewers who provided feedback on earlier drafts of this report. In particular, we would like to thank Background Industrial and systems engineering (ISyE) has the potential to address many of the challenges faced by the health care delivery system. Mindful of potential synergies between health care and ISyE, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) convened a workshop in which experts in both fields were asked to explore the critical areas of research at the intersection of ISyE and health care, with a special emphasis on the supportive role of health information technology (IT). Objectives The objectives of the project were to (1) articulate a vision for an ideal health care delivery system, (2) determine why current efforts to apply ISyE knowledge to health care have not resulted in meaningful change, and (3) propose a research and action agenda that should be pursued to enable the field of ISyE to substantially contribute to the realization of an ideal health care delivery system. Methodology Background materials included thirteen seminal reports generated in the last decade by various national bodies and a background report reviewing and critiquing them. Analysis of background materials led to the formulation of purpose statements for the workshop, guided participant invitations, and helped shape the activities undertaken as part of the workshop and afterwards. The background materials were circulated to all participants prior to the workshop. Presentations and keynote addresses during the workshop contributed to providing a backdrop for discussions. Small group discussions were used to probe deeply into how specific ISyE specialties could address health care challenges. Five ISyE specialty groups and six health care challenge area groups were constructed. Each participant was assigned to one ISyE group and one crosscutting health care challenge area group. Large group discussions served to identify points of consensus and tension, and to report out conclusions reached by the small …