The answers to many of the dilemmas faced by the US healthcare system, such as increasing costs, inadequate access, and uneven quality, lie in organizational operations – the nuts and bolts of healthcare delivery. Leading healthcare organizations have begun to employ the programs, techniques, and tools of operations improvement that industries outside of healthcare have successfully used for decades.

Healthcare Operations Management aims to help healthcare management students and working professionals find ways to improve the delivery of healthcare, with its complex web of patients, providers, reimbursement systems, physician relations, workforce challenges, and intensive government regulation. Taking an integrated approach, the book puts the tools and techniques of operations improvement into the context of healthcare so that readers learn how to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of tomorrow's healthcare system.

Thoroughly revised and updated, this edition includes:

With its plentiful examples, guidelines to software tools, and emphasis on contemporary healthcare management issues, this book provides current and future healthcare professionals alike with a broad foundation for implementing operational improvements in their organizations.

Daniel B. McLaughlin is the director of the Center for Health and Medical Affairs in the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Previously, he was the executive director of the National Institute of Health Policy at St. Thomas, the CEO of Hennepin County Medical Center, and the director of a county health system.