Date of Submission

12-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Industrial Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering

Advisor

Dr. Nadiye Erdil

Committee Member

Dr. Gokhan Egilmez

Committee Member

Dr. Ali Montazer

Keywords

Clinical decision making, Operational decision-making, Framework, Healthcare managers, Surgical Site Infections

LCSH

Decision making, Medical care, Quality control--Charts, diagrams, etc, Clinical medicine--Decision making,

Abstract

The primary objective of this thesis was to design a framework supplemented with guidelines for the healthcare managers to select an appropriate type of control chart for operational decision-making. A systematic literature review was conducted to gauge the extent to which control charts were being used in a healthcare setting for clinical decision making and operational decision-making purposes. The findings showed that the application of control charts was almost equal for the clinical decision-making sector and the operational decision-making sector. On further analysis, the ability of control charts to function as a standalone tool was affirmed by the vast majority of studies where it was deployed as a primary tool for quality improvement purposes.

The framework contains some prerequisites with regards to data collection and construction of control charts. Also, the metrics involved are clearly identified: Quality, Financial, Volume and Utilization; and subsequently defined. The guidelines were created keeping the metric and possible scenario/s that can be associated with it into consideration. These guidelines would save the healthcare managers their time and significantly reduce the chances of selecting an inappropriate type of control chart. Potential operational areas for the usage of control charts are also discussed in the thesis.

In order to demonstrate the way in which the prescribed framework can be implemented in a real-life hospital environment, a regional hospital was chosen and the yearly rate of Surgical Site Infections (SSI) for colon surgery was monitored using an appropriate control chart which was selected by following the guidelines outlined in the framework.

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