Viable Vision for Health Care Systems (Chapter 31 of Theory of Constraints Handbook)

This is an individual chapter of Theory of Constraints Handbook. The purpose of this chapter is to show how the TOC philosophy can be applied along with other process improvement tools like Lean and Six Sigma to solve health care problems of any system, and provide excellent health care to a large number of end customers, the patients. By carefully defining the system under our control within the context of National health care, TOC can help resolve conflicts between our system’s vision and the national health care policies; resolve conflicts between global vs. local optimization within organizations; improve the throughput of patients; provide high quality, reliable treatment to patients; align the front level staff to executive management staff through the Strategy & Tactics hierarchical tree; and provide decision-making tools for investments and pricing of our services. I believe that TOC is the only science available that provides tools for alignment of the private self-interests of several health care providers towards one goal of providing excellent health care to the majority of the people in the country without rationing or cost-cutting procedures.