Building an ‘Industrial Engineering Mindset’ among Indian Healthcare Executives: Toward Management of Healthcare Facilities at an Industrial Scale post the COVID-19 Pandemic

Som Sekhar Bhattacharyya,Rajesh Chandwani

doi:10.1177/2516600x211005997

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the necessity of good quality and adequate quantity of healthcare infrastructure facilities. Healthcare facilities were provided for COVID-19 facilities with improvisation and supplementary lateral infrastructure from other sectors. However, the main point of contemplation going into the future was regarding how to quickly develop healthcare facilities. The subject domain of ‘industrial engineering’ (IE) and its associated perspectives could provide some key insights regarding this. The authors undertook a conceptual literature review and provided theoretical argumentation toward this. The findings provided insights regarding the application of industrial engineering concepts in healthcare facilities and services.

Highlights

India as a country has prospered well post the era of liberalization, globalization, and privatization (LPG) embarked from the year 1991 (Agarwal, 2003; Anand, 2014; McCartney, 2009; Sharma, 2015)
An industrial engineering’ (IE)-driven ‘mindset’ at the leadership level in a healthcare firm can be tautologically argued to develop a positive organizational cultural toward increasing efficiency, as well as efficacy. This IE conceptual literature review, set from the perspective of healthcare facilities and services, provides a top-management perspective regarding what concepts of IE should be applied in which healthcare operations, when, and how for the most optimal output
This conceptual literature review would help provide IE scholars, as well as healthcare facilities and their service delivery researchers, a platform to anchor their research to a set of theoretical constructs on IE concepts

Summary

Introduction

India as a country has prospered well post the era of liberalization, globalization, and privatization (LPG) embarked from the year 1991 (Agarwal, 2003; Anand, 2014; McCartney, 2009; Sharma, 2015). The footprints of both foreign and private players increased in both Indian industries and the market. The quantum of healthcare facilities always was far less than what was required by the country of 1.3 billion citizens (Gupta et al, 2015; Itumalla & Acharyulu, 2012). The ability of these individuals to pay for healthcare services and products was extremely limited

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Discussion

Conclusion