Avgerinos, E; (2016) Team and Task Dynamics in Healthcare and Professional Service Operations. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis examines how team, task and workforce dynamics affect performance on healthcare and professional service operations. I use operations management and organizational domains to develop theories and employ econometric models to better understand knowledge intensive environments. In the first chapter I use data from Coronary Artery Bypass Graft operations in order to examine the way exposure to related variety can affect individual learning. Specifically, I introduce timing as a new dimension on the effect of related variety on individual productivity on a focal task and show that exposure to variety can have differentiated effects on individual productivity based on different mechanisms. My findings suggest that concurrent exposure with the focal task has a positive effect whereas non-concurrent one has a negative effect on individual focal productivity. I also introduce recent concurrent and non-concurrent exposures as moderating factors on the effect of long-term concurrent and nonconcurrent exposures respectively on individual learning. In the second chapter I focus on cardiac surgery teams and examine the effect of team allocation on their productivity. Specifically, I introduce new familiarity related concepts and ways on how past common experiences among team members can affect team productivity. Next, I divide average team familiarity into two components: One gained from complex and one gained from simpler tasks and show their differentiated effects on team productivity. I also investigate the way average team familiarity interacts with task complexity. In the final chapter, I use a dataset from England’s National Health Service (NHS)’s 111 non-emergency helpline in order to investigate the effect of non-clinical labor mix on efficiency and quality of patient service. My results indicate that while non-clinical workforce increases the efficiency of patient service, it may lead to new inefficiencies through misuse of critical resources and may reduce the quality outcome of the patient service.

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