A System Dynamics Approach to Healthcare Cost Control

Abstract The purpose of this article is to present a system dynamics (SD) model for studying the ‎interconnections among human being weight, eating habit, exercise, body fat, take-in medication, drugs-uses, and the health problems in general. Due to the fact that all of these factors have direct and indirect impacts on the expenses that insurance company have to pay this author is proposing a systems thinking approach for determining the interconnections among the factors and uses the concept of system dynamics to simulate and determine the behavior of the system. To do so, this author has reviewed key point ‎about the system thinking, related theories, and system dynamics. Next, models in ‎the form of causal loops presenting the interconnections between weight factor ‎and health problems are developed and discussed. Thereafter, a flow diagram of ‎model is constructed and the overall expenses are studied. Expense rates are classified as: operational expenses (OE), treatment expenses (TE), Medication expenses (ME), Hospitality expenses (HE), and Drug treatment expenses (DE). This article makes a significant contribution to the health ‎study issues due to the fact that it shows how a factor such as weight can have ‎impacts on hearth attack, blood pressure, and blood sugar, to mention a few, and how relate all these to the overall expenses that an insurance company have to pay at last. ‎Since, to the best of this author's knowledge, this is the first study that relates ‎weight to health problem using systems thinking concepts and system dynamics approach ‎it makes significant contribution to health literature.‎