Knowledge Management for Operations Management Within Health Care.

The aging population of the western world poses a medical challenge for the society of today and of the future. In hospitals, healthcare professionals manage health care with the objective to provide care of high quality using the limited available resources. The decision-making in production and capacity planning decisions requires coordination and management of knowledge in different hierarchical levels and in different time-frames. Thus, this knowledge management is also needed between various health care services within a hospital, as well as with other healthcare providers, at a horizontal level. This paper is based on a qualitative study, conducted as a case study at a hospital in western Sweden. Eleven managers together with their production controllers were interviewed. This paper aims to analyze the challenges the health care at the hospital face related to the knowledge management in the production and capacity planning and control of activities performed. The difficulties found refers to limitations in knowledge management according to three different themes identified. These themes are the influence of political decisions, coordination and participation, and methods and IT-systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]