Analysis of an Outpatient Consultation Network in a Veterans Administration Health Care System Hospital

Many healtcare organizations face the challenge of scaling up effective health care delivery. There is a growing agreement that a better understanding of the structure of the healthcare system is needed to achieve that goal. Networks analysis provides the formal framework of thought to understand such systems. Given the definition of health care system as as a network of actors who aim to provide health care, the links to network anlysis is made very clear [1]. The network can be an integrated delivery system, a centrally controlled multi-hospital system or a virtual system composed of many partners like the one we observe in tele-health. In the healthcare community there is a growing interest in the understanding of the relationship between the structure of a healthcare network and care delivery. In this regard network analysis provides the intellectual framework to reason on issues of outcomes and cost but more importantly that of scale (i.e. different healthcare delivery regions) as it allows to capture the complexity of structure (medical/non-medical providers, private/public insurers etc.) and dynamics of healthcare on any scale in a rigorous manner.