A contribution to performance measurement in the healthcare industry: the industrial point of view

The health domain has entered the crucial phase of an important paradigm shift. The word 'customer' has started replacing the word 'patient'. It has been commonly admitted that the hospital's industry must be financed by social systems and only continue to exist as long as sufficient financial resources are available. This statement should be definitely replaced by: "What must be changed such that within available budgets more health can be produced?" This new philosophy needs a system that is able to measure impacts of any local modification on the global system. The present paper aims at finding a Theory of Constraints (TOC)-based answer to the hospital measurement system. TOC has been largely applied in the industrial world. Some successful implementations are reported from the financial industry, but so far the socio-economic world using TOC is mainly limited to profit organisations. We propose an extension of the TOC concept towards a non-profit world.