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Modelling home care organisations from an operations management perspective

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Abstract

Home Care (HC) service consists of providing care to patients in their homes. During the last decade, the HC service industry experienced significant growth in many European countries. This growth stems from several factors, such as governmental pressure to reduce healthcare costs, demographic changes related to population ageing, social changes, an increase in the number of patients that suffer from chronic illnesses, and the development of new home-based services and technologies. This study proposes a framework that will enable HC service providers to better understand HC operations and their management. The study identifies the main processes and decisions that relate to the field of HC operations management. Hence, an IDEF0 (Integrated Definition for Function Modelling) activity-based model describes the most relevant clinical, logistical and organisational processes associated with HC operations. A hierarchical framework for operations management decisions is also proposed. This analysis is derived from data that was collected by nine HC service providers, which are located in France and Italy, and focuses on the manner in which operations are run, as well as associated constraints, inputs and outputs. The most challenging research areas in the field of HC operations management are also discussed.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all of the HC organisations that were involved in this study for their collaboration. We are particularly grateful for their useful feedback and assistance with data collection. The authors also thank three anonymous referees whose constructive comments enabled to improve the previous version of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Meccanica, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Andrea Matta

  2. School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Westminster, London, UK

    Salma Chahed

  3. Ecole Centrale Paris, Laboratoire Génie Industriel, Paris, France

    Evren Sahin & Yves Dallery

Authors
  1. Andrea Matta
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  2. Salma Chahed
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  3. Evren Sahin
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  4. Yves Dallery
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Correspondence to Andrea Matta.

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Matta, A., Chahed, S., Sahin, E. et al. Modelling home care organisations from an operations management perspective. Flex Serv Manuf J 26, 295–319 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10696-012-9157-0

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