Taxonomic classification of planning decisions in health care: a structured review of the state of the art in OR/MS

Abstract

We provide a comprehensive overview of the typical decisions to be made in resource capacity planning and control in health care, and a structured review of relevant articles from the field of Operations Research and Management Sciences (OR/MS) for each planning decision. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, to position the planning decisions, a taxonomy is presented. This taxonomy provides health care managers and OR/MS researchers with a method to identify, break down and classify planning and control decisions. Second, following the taxonomy, for six health care services, we provide an exhaustive specification of planning and control decisions in resource capacity planning and control. For each planning and control decision, we structurally review the key OR/MS articles and the OR/MS methods and techniques that are applied in the literature to support decision making.

Keywords:

• health care management
• operations research
• management science
• resource capacity planning
• literature review

Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the Dutch Technology Foundation STW, applied science division of NWO and the Technology Program of the Ministry of Economic Affairs.