The Misalignment between Hospital Planning Frameworks and their Planning Environment - A Conceptual Matching Approach

Abstract

Scientifically developed hospital planning frameworks have emerged during the last decade to support and prescribe planning and control practice in hospitals. The three presented frameworks are generally based on manufacturing planning and control frameworks attuned for manufacturing environments. This is critical to the adaptability of the frameworks, since manufacturing environments are focused on optimization of repetitive production processes whereas hospital processes are characterised by complex problem-solving processes with a high degree of uncertainty. In this paper, we identify and describe the misalignment from an environment variables perspective through analysis and comparison of three prominent hospital planning frameworks and hospital planning variables derived from empirical studies in existing research. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2014.