5 product engineering methods to use in health care management.

A healthy workforce is critical to the success of an organization or a society. Properly managing the delivery of health care is thus an important function of modern health care systems. However, health care delivery today is rife with waste and inefficiency. Kohn et al. (2000) estimated 50,000 to 100,000 lives are lost each year because of medical errors. Schoen et al. (2006) found that 42 percent of the responders in a survey, “Public Views on Shaping the Future of the U.S. Health System,” felt that the health care system was inefficient. In 2011, Schoen found that efficiency in the U.S. health care system remained low, costs rose and disparities persisted. This although health care accounts for over 17 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (OECD, 2012). Researchers have identified several common causes of waste in health care. There seems to be a consensus that problems in health care delivery need resolutions. Systematic approaches from other fields can be applied to reach such resolutions.