Process Improvement for Value Creation: a Case of Health Care Organization

Every organization can be viewed as a set of processes and activities that are structured to satisfy customers' needs and expectations. The pressure of global competition, technology progress, increasing product and service complexity, and strong customer orientation force organizations to improve processes and their capability to create and deliver value. The fundamental goal of health care sector is added value for patients. The paper aims to develop a conceptual framework for healthcare processes improvement from the viewpoint of value creation. Based on systematic and comparative analysis of scientific literature, authors of the paper present the theoretical model of processes improvement for value creation from patient and organization perspectives. Value for patient is reflected in better access to services, time and cost reduction, quality improvement, convenience, and satisfaction. From organization perspective this leads to quality improvement, waste elimination and, finally, to a competitive advantage. Empirical research was conducted at outpatient clinic reception. 360 degree empirical research was applied during it including all parts interested, namely outpatient clinic's administration representatives, employees and patients. There were identified problematic areas of outpatient clinic's reception work processes and suggestions for processes improvement presented