Title: Web-based hospital information system for managing operating theatre waiting list

Authors: Latif Al-Hakim

Addresses: Faculty of Business, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland 4350, Australia

Abstract: Waiting lists are of great concern to healthcare executives because of their societal and political priority. This paper presents a web-based system for managing operating theatre waiting lists in hospitals. It challenges traditional hospital strategies for managing waiting lists and sets out to achieve three objectives. Firstly, to manage patients waiting for surgery interventions within only one waiting list, secondly, to improve customer satisfaction in an environment that often imposes unexpected and unexplained deviation from planned activities and thirdly, to create a system effectively supporting decisions for waiting list management. The paper uses IDEF0 to map the waiting list management process and fuzzy logics to deal with the dynamic nature of the process.

Keywords: fuzzy logic; IDEF0; process mapping; web-based information systems; hospital information systems; operating theatre; waiting lists; internet; electronic healthcare; e-healthcare; waiting list management; customer satisfaction; surgery.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2006.008436

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 2006 Vol.7 No.3/4, pp.266 - 282

Published online: 20 Dec 2005 *

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