SHARE - A TOOL TO ANALYZE AND ASSESS STRATEGIES IN HEALTH-CARE ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

In health care organizations, management of both human and material re sources implies decision making. When seemingly equivalent strategies are possible, simulation can help to make a decision on better grounds . The SHARE workframe was designed to address the specificities of hea lth care and to provide a comprehensive environment for modelling and simulating health care processes. The typology of objects is defined a s Actors, subdivided in Clients and Resources and Elementary Operation s. Graphical tools allow us to build processes from these objects and to create their relationships. Various strategies based on either clin ical or managerial changes may be investigated. After a simulation, gr aphical tools allow us to display summary information on the utilizati on of all actors, waiting times, and goodness of execution. The use of SHARE is exemplified with the analysis and simulation of changes in t he Pulmonary Function Testing Laboratory of the Saint-Antoine Hospital , Paris. (C) 1998 Academic Press.