Systems engineering approach to healthcare performance analysis

The objective of the paper is to present a method for analysing the performance of a territorial healthcare system. The proposed method has been developed by using the main concepts of the maintenance service of production systems, and transferring them into the healthcare services. To this aim, significant analogies have been recognised between a basic strategy for production system maintenance and the main actions to be done for patient healthcare. Based on this analogy, main key performance indicators (KPI) in industrial maintenance have been directly related to KPIs in healthcare. Then, a transfer of industrial maintenance actions, described by a specific ontology, has originated a corresponding ontology of main healthcare activities at the level of a territorial healthcare service system. The resulting ontology has been applied as a guide in conducting the analysis of the characteristics and performance of a regional healthcare system.