review · Decision Analytics Journal
Home health care delivers medical services directly at patients' homes, serving as an alternative to traditional hospital care. While life expectancy is rising, particularly in developing countries, health facilities and resources are failing to expand at a matching rate, driving global demand for home-based care. In response, academic focus on operations management and planning within the sector has grown considerably over the past decade. This systematic literature review examines research on home health care management practices, with a specific emphasis on studies that account for uncertainty. By categorising existing publications into distinct themes across operational, tactical, and strategic planning levels, the work outlines emerging industry trends and highlights priorities for future investigation. Ultimately, these findings offer an analytical foundation to guide resource allocation and service planning across diverse tiers of home health care provision.
As healthcare systems struggle to keep pace with growing populations and rising life expectancy, delivering medical care at home offers a vital alternative to overburdened hospitals. Understanding how to manage logistics and operations under uncertain conditions helps ensure that patients receive reliable care while health providers make the most efficient use of constrained medical resources.
The work represents early-stage conceptual research, as it provides a systematic literature review rather than a deployable product or algorithm. The identified themes and planning levels could inform healthcare logistics software developers, health system managers, and home care organisations designing decision-support tools, particularly for operational and strategic planning under uncertainty. However, the abstract does not present an applied or tested commercial technology.
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Patients are traditionally treated in hospitals and healthcare facilities. However, many care services known as Home Health Care (HHC) are provided at patients’ homes. Despite the growing trend in life expectancy in developing countries, the number of health facilities and resources is not increasing at a similar rate. Therefore, the need for HHC is increasing worldwide. Over the last decade, research on operations management and planning in the HHC industry has received increased attention. This paper presents a systematic literature review to analyse the research on HHC management practices. The emphasis has been given to research papers considering uncertainty. The studied articles are assigned to research themes defined for each planning level. Each theme is discussed while identifying emerging trends and future research directions. The findings of this review can be used as the basis for HHC operational, tactical, and strategic planning and related topics.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.dajour.2023.100215
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