This presentation shows how the HealthCare System operates.

1. How HealthCare Systems Operate
Yours Truly,
Kaila Beckrow

2. Article Overview
➔Breaks down the HealthCare System into four components
◆ The individual Patient
◆ The Care Team
◆ The Organization
◆ The Environment
➔Under each component, the article goes into detail about how they play a
role in the HealthCare system.

3. Article Overview
➔Within each component, the article also tells how communication and
information flows in and out of each system.
➔The article gives a good Four-Level Model of the HealthCare System to
help break down how all of the components mold together.

4. System Components
➔Systems are many different parts, in the simplest terms
➔In an organizational system, people and departments are the components
that make up the system.
➔There are three concepts that characterize system components
◆ Hierarchical ordering
◆ Interdependence
◆ Permeability

5. Hierarchical Ordering
➔Components that are arranged in a complex way that contain subsystems
and supersystems.

6. Interdependence
➔The functioning of one component within the system relies on other
components of the system.

7. Permeability
➔Allows information and materials to flow in and out of a system.
➔A system could be open or closed.
◆ Open: all sorts of information and people are constantly moving in and out
◆ Closed: not so much collaboration with anyone/thing outside of the system

8. The HealthCare System
➔There is a four-level healthcare system that gives adequate examples of
hierarchical ordering, interdependence, and permeability when each
system is broken down.
◆ Level 1: The Individual Patient
◆ Level 2: The Care Team
◆ Level 3: The Organization
◆ Level 4: The Environment

9. The Individual Patient
➔Patients rely on hospitals and doctors when they are having health issues.
➔During critical circumstances, patients have to delegate someone to make
an important decision for them whether it be a family member or a
clinician/counselor.
➔Patients need a free exchange of information and communication with
physicians and other members of the care team whether it is from the
same care team or a care team they were previously associated with
(Permeability)

10. The Individual Patient
➔Clinicians/counselors and family members also need access to
educational, decision-support, information-management, and
communication tools that help relay important information from different
sources.

11. Interdependence
➔Interdependence shows when focusing on the patient because a nurse
could find something wrong with a patient so the patient goes to a doctor
at the hospital and from there the patient might get referred to a specialist
depending on the severity of the situation.

12. The Care Team
➔Basic building block of a “clinical microsystem”- “the smallest replicable
unit within an organization or across multiple organizations that is
replicable in the sense that is contains within itself the necessary human,
financial, and technological resources to do its work” (Hierarchical
Ordering)
◆ However, sometimes they have to reach out to other organizations for patient information-
Permeability

13. The Care Team
➔ Consists of the individual
physician and a group of care
providers (Interdependence)
➔ The physician may need to
contact another physician or
doctor that the patient has seen
in the past to get medical records
(Permeability)
(EXCUSE THE BLUR)

14. The Organization
➔Hospital, clinic, nursing home
➔Uses decision-making systems, information systems, operating systems,
and process to coordinate activities of multiple care teams and supporting
units and manages the flow of human, material, and financial resources
and information in support of care teams

15. The Environment
➔Includes regulatory, financial, and payment administrations and entities
that influence the structure and performance of healthcare organizations
directly and all other levels of the system
➔Patients can influence the political and economic environment for
healthcare.

16. Breaking It Down
➔If you break down hierarchical ordering and look at it in regards to the
HealthCare industry, you can see it when you think about all the
subsystems in a hospital: ER, labs, offices, recovery units
➔You can also look at it in broader terms and see the organizations- clinics,
nursing homes, hospitals- as subsystems of the HealthCare industry

17. Breaking It Down
➔When thinking about The Care Team, we can look at surgeons/doctors.
The doctor would not know what to do to a patient without the nurse telling
them what is wrong or from the lab results.
◆ This is a prime example of interdependence because one part of the whole system is
relying on the other to operate.

18. Breaking It Down
➔Hospitals are constantly utilizing permeability and ultimately could not
function without it.
➔They need to order materials and sometimes consult with other
specialists/doctors about their patient.
➔Information between many hospital units is constantly being shared with
one and other to facilitate the flow of people, information, and materials.

19. Questions
➔In regards to the system components, how did they know those were the
best for a hospital? Why not some other approach?
➔If these systems of operation seem to work so well, why is it that often
times information about a patient is miscommunicated or not
communicated at all in a hospital?

20. Thoughts
➔Giving my thoughts about my previous questions, I believe they use the
system they do because a hospital contains many parts, and they cannot
just get alone with on operator and no help from the outside.
➔I believe mistakes are made in hospitals even while using what seem like a
perfect and efficient system because people are human; we over look
things; we forget things; we misinterpret things; ultimately, we make
mistakes.

21. Works Cited
National Academy of Engineering (US) and Institute of Medicine (US)Committee on Engineering
and the Health Care System. (1970, January 01). A Framework for a Systems Approach to
Health Care Delivery. Retrieved March 08, 2017, from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22878/
P.S. I had a lot of questions on how to approach this
project, so I did what I thought was right. I hope you
liked it :)