Systems thinking in Health Care: Best approach to problem solving.
By Ibrahim Suley
Healthcare is a vast and complex industry. It consists of numerous components, including the supply chain, policymakers, health care service delivery points, manufacturing, the health care team, the patient, and research. Retailers and wholesalers comprise the supply chain. Policy formulation includes regulations and insurance. Hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics are examples of service delivery points. Each of these components works in tandem to address the demands for high-quality care, expanded access, and lower healthcare costs. Nonetheless, many obstacles within this system may occur, making meeting these criteria challenging. Attempting to address these issues using the usual way of analyzing each aspect one at a time is futile, and a more robust approach is necessary. This necessitates the application of what is known as systems thinking in the health care arena.
Despite discoveries in health care service delivery and government interventions aimed at improving individuals’ health and well-being, huge discrepancies and shortcomings in care provision persist. This is demonstrated by an increase in the frequency of medical errors, an increase in hospital re-admission and death rates, and the failure of many health-care systems to cope successfully with events such as pandemics and other natural disasters like flash floods currently ravaging across the Country.
Interdependence of healthcare factors can develop solutions that can as well help to achieve excellent patient care and enhance access to health care. System thinking is crucial in the health care industry since it aids in the investigation of a specific problem within the context of the system as a whole. This helps in the development of solutions that are compatible with all other aspects of healthcare. Systems thinking also help in planning and research as well as ensuring that people work closely together and, as a result, learn from one another.
Systems thinking is a problem-solving method in which a problem is analyzed as a component of a larger system rather than as an isolated component. In healthcare, systems’ thinking is examining how various healthcare components interact with one another in order to develop solutions that improve care quality.
It’s also about investigating what set of factors and interactions are contributing to or could contribute to a possible outcome. It is otherwise conducting the root cause of a specific problem in the context of health care service delivery with the sole objective being the highest standard of quality of care for the patient. There are various reasons why national health-care program fail. The interconnectedness of many areas of service, funding mechanisms, the complexity of patients’ conditions and the clinical processes necessary for patients from multiple providers are all important causes.
Researchers have compared the health-care system to the aviation industry, with the flight cockpit representing the operating theatre and the flight captain representing the surgeon in the context of health. In the contemporary times, the number of fatal plane crashes has decreased in the past two decades, but the number of flights has increased significantly. However, the frequency of deaths and errors in health-care services has increased significantly. Both techniques aims to increase patients and passenger safety.
Health service and health care administration is fraught with complications. It has been confirmed that health care complexity is due to the complex nature of health problems and socioeconomic determinants of health disparities, in conjunction with health service concerns (such as training, institutions, and policies and procedures). However, systems thinking methodologies have rarely been employed to solve the complex difficulties associated with health care delivery.
To ensure that systems thinking methodologies are extensively used in health care settings to address health-care-related challenges, a transformation in the way leadership and management in health services work is required. Integrating systems thinking into health care necessitates the creation of system thinkers and system leaders. Those who can evaluate multiple views understand that complicated situations do not have a single answer and that problems are dynamic and ever-changing.
Furthermore, it entails providing opportunities for leaders to gain an understanding that systems thinking is a sense-making process that includes interrelationships, viewpoints, and boundaries. Experts and researchers have proposed some approaches for promoting systems thinking in healthcare organizations that has been adapted and used in the modern times. This approaches includes conducting an evaluation design to understand the system-wide consequences of an intervention or process with the goal of determining the effectiveness of the intervention or process.
In summary, System thinking may provide a method for addressing complicated health care delivery problems where many stakeholders are involved and elements contributing to a problem are dynamic and interconnected. Training for clinicians and health service managers is crucial to ensuring its implementation in health care settings. Furthermore, approaches for using systems thinking methodology in health care settings must be developed and tested before executing into large scale.
The writer is a Clinician/Health systems expert and researcher (PHD Candidate). He is a quality and performance improvement champion from Liverpool school of tropical medicine, UK and the immediate former CEC Health Services, Wajir County.
