NCI Working Group on Using Management Science & Engineering to Improve Cancer Care Delivery
The purpose of this working group is to identify new perspectives, methodologies and approaches from Management Science and Engineering that could help reduce death and suffering from cancer. There are many expectations in the new health care reform bill regarding what organizations should be doing to try and help improve healthcare value; however, most of these issues focus on primary care. Consequently, two questions have emerged: How do we bring specialty care into this debate? And what can research do to help guide these efforts? Although NCI does considerable work in cancer prevention and screening, these areas are already the focus of much research, as they fall under primary care.
NCI would like to build its research portfolio to focus on the entire cancer continuum, targeting diagnosis to end of life. Management Science and Engineering is an exciting new approach that could be used as a tool to help build this program and provide information to achieve NCI's objective (reduce death and suffering from cancer). This approach will be challenging though, since NCI's current health services research is focused on individuals, e.g. the patient, the clinician, etc. The focus of research is rarely the health organization, an important element in cancer care. It will be important to answer, "What performance characteristics should health organizations have?" and "What tools are needed in order for organizations to achieve the desired performance objectives?" NCI is interested in learning how lessons from Management Science and Engineering can contribute to help build NCI's research program to answer these questions.Report: Using Management Science and Engineering to Improve Cancer Care Delivery (PDF, 346 KB)
Last Modified: 18 Oct 2013