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Building efficient healthcare using Knowledge Management

Building effective health care organizations	Processes with the aim to make the company more efficient must do so without jeopardizing the quality of the delivered health care. Processes based on two fundamental assumptions: The economical results usually require that action be started without any delay. The work therefore has to be initiated without long and tiresome planning and evaluation phases. Secondly, the strategy called for is a systematic approach. At the same time it has to be a business optimization strategy. It cannot be limited to either specific technologies or specific sources of information. In other words, a ‘Knowledge Management’ (=KM) approach.
My background:	My scientific background for doing consultancy in health care organizations is based on a profound knowledge in what I call the healthcare triangle. The triangle represents the three perspectives of my three university degrees and my teaching experiences in all three disciplines. First my M.D.- degree represents the patient perspective. Secondly my Master of Public Administration degree represents the administration of a society's health care system perspective. Finally my Master in Public Health degree fills the perspective of the health of the population. In addition I have practical professional working experience in all three perspective. Hands on patient experience working as Consultant in general practice, internal medicine and nephrology. I have held leading management positions in private as well as public organization and I have been advisor on public health issues. For you - my client – it ensures that I have a holistic approach when optimizing your organization - using knowledge management.
	Each optimization project is different. For example each organization has very different cultures. They have different technological maturity. They work in different healthcare systems and they provide very different services to their clients. It means that there does not exist one tool that fits them all. Below you will find a brief of some of the different tools that can be used in the drive to build more efficient healthcare organizations.

Efficiency

	Processes with the aim to make the company more efficient must do so without jeopardizing the quality of the delivered health care. Processes based on two fundamental assumptions: The economical results usually require that action be started without any delay. The work therefore has to be initiated without long and tiresome planning and evaluation phases. Secondly, the strategy called for is a systematic approach. At the same time it has to be a business optimization strategy. It cannot be limited to either specific technologies or specific sources of information. In other words, a ‘Knowledge Management’ (=KM) approach.
Knowledge management	What is knowledge management (KM)? From a practical business perspective KM can be defined as ‘A deliberate, systematic business optimization strategy that selects, distills, stores, organizes, packages, and communicates information essential to the business of a company in a manner that improves employee performance and corporate competiveness’. WHO’s definition is ‘Knowledge management is a set of principles, tools and practices that enable people to create knowledge, and to share, translate and apply what they know to create value and improve effectiveness’. In essence it is the same definition as that of Bergeron. Knowledge Management offers a holistic viewpoint, where boundaries between people, technology, processes and systems, no longer get in the way of effective understanding and practical solutions
Lean management	Does Lean Management apply to healthcare? Absolutely - see case
Discrete Event Simulation	What is Discrete Event Simulation? Discrete event simulation (DES) is able to deal with detail complexity by simulating the life histories of individuals and then estimating the population effect from the sum of the individual effects. Each member of the population (entity) included in a simulation model is tracked through a network of options. At each decision point a variety of choices are available, and the outcome will depend on, for example, the characteristics of the entity and resources, previous movement through the model, and the choices other entities have made. In a stochastic system these choices are made by random sampling from defined probability distributions. See the example using DES to simulate a population on Hemodialysis