Theory of constraints for publicly funded health s

Authors: Somayeh Sadat Michael W Carter Brian Golden

Publish Date: 2012/08/21

Volume: 16, Issue: 1, Pages: 62-74

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Abstract

Originally developed in the context of publicly traded forprofit companies theory of constraints TOC improves system performance through leveraging the constraints While the theory seems to be a natural fit for resourceconstrained publicly funded health systems there is a lack of literature addressing the modifications required to adopt TOC and define the goal and performance measures This paper develops a system dynamics representation of the classical TOC’s systemwide goal and performance measures for publicly traded forprofit companies which forms the basis for developing a similar model for publicly funded health systems The model is then expanded to include some of the factors that affect system performance providing a framework to apply TOC’s process of ongoing improvement in publicly funded health systems Future research is required to more accurately define the factors affecting system performance and populate the model with evidencebased estimates for various parameters in order to use the model to guide TOC’s process of ongoing improvement

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