Health Care Management: The Contribution of Systems Thinking

Abstract

This paper investigates the advantages of using Systems Thinking and System Dynamics in the analysis of health care systems. It demonstrates that the disappointing results observed in health care management are due to a lack of adoption of systemic methods to study these systems. The paper portrays the consequences and causes of policy resistance in health care systems and how they can be overcome by using the System Dynamics (SD) methodology. After a description of the previous areas of application of SD in health care management, an initial qualitative study of health care system reforms in the Republic of Georgia is described to demonstrate the extent of complexity involved in such systems.