Using Project Management as a Way to Excellence in Healthcare

Health care institutions are coping with growing demands coming from the fast changes of the environment related to technology, costs, personnel etc. Therefore they are seeking for a new management approaches day to day. Various attempts all over the world have been made in order to enhance management in healthcare. However, there are no proper solutions yet. Project management was originally applied in the areas of construction, engineering etc. Academic research in the UK and other countries points out increasing numbers of new developments and new initiatives being pursued through projects and programmes. Project management is no longer just a sub-discipline of engineering, the management of projects - including programme management and portfolio management - is now the dominant model in many organisations for strategy implementation, business transformation, continuous improvement and new product development. Project management has extensive current opportunities and a bright future. One of the very important areas where it starts to find its application is certainly healthcare. There were some attempts both practical and theoretical to apply Project management in a healthcare (also published in Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice). This paper is trying to go deeper and to apply project management methods in every aspect of clinical practice. The pilot project was conducted on inguinal hernia surgery that was organized as a project and showed substantial results in terms of organizational enhancement. Therefore, one may conclude that the discipline of project management is emerging in healthcare institutions and it could significantly help improving efficiency of medical organizations.