Designing a conceptual framework to enhance the success of Business Process Reengineering in hospital environments based on holonic structures

Abstract

In order to tackle the numerous problems facing with service management in healthcare industry, various quality improvement (QI) techniques are used for improving the quality of services in this section. Among with these techniques, Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) has more potential to solve these challenges, due to its focus on fundamental changes. However this approach, in turn, have a significant executive challenges and problems, especially in change process, which is rooted in sever hierarchical structure in these environments particularly in hospitals. Hence, whereas the process-oriented structure is one of the critical success factors in BPR implementation, this structure cannot be completely employed in hospital environments. To overcome mentioned obstacle, this research aims to develop a new organizational structure in the process of BPR implementation in hospitals, based on "Holonic concepts" as a kind of nonhierarchical structures. In his model, each care services is met by means of some "care holons" that each of them can be adapted according to structural requirements of related services and consequently can bring advantages of both vertical and horizontal organizational structures.