Healthcare Analytics: Examining the Diagnosis–treatment Cycle

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that the patients’ diagnosis-treatment cycles often significantly deviate from the standardized clinical pathways. Analyzing these deviations might result in the further enhancement of the quality of care, the promotion of patient safety, an increase in patient satisfaction and an optimization of the use of resources. Understanding pathway behavior and deviations becomes possible because of an increased availability of reliable data, which originates from the hospitals information systems.In this paper we propose a clinical pathway analysis method for extracting valuable medical and organizational information on past diagnosis-treatment cycles that can be attributed to a specific clinical pathway. The method is applied on the clinical pathway processes in a Gynecologic Oncology Department.