A Systems Approach

Sys­tems

A sys­tem is a set of inter­act­ing inde­pen­dent enti­ties form­ing an inte­grated whole. In gen­eral, well func­tion­ing sys­tems exhibit a pur­pose­ful design and pro­vide prod­ucts and ser­vices that are eas­ily scalable.

Three core com­pe­ten­cies have been iden­ti­fied by the Insti­tute of Med­i­cine as the fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks of a com­pe­tent health care sys­tem: Health Assess­ment, Pol­icy Devel­op­ment, and Health Assur­ance. Together these con­sti­tute the 10 essen­tial ser­vices of pub­lic health.

This frame­work pro­vides a broad start­ing point to man­age the com­plex chal­lenges that are required to orga­nize a well func­tion­ing health care sys­tem. A review of the domes­tic and global health care sys­tems reveal that both con­tain sub­stan­tial per­for­mance gaps that are con­cealed by their com­plex­ity. These gaps neg­a­tively impact the sys­tem, but rep­re­sent oppor­tu­ni­ties for enhance­ment when we are able to embrace the mul­ti­tude of con­nec­tions con­sti­tut­ing the whole and appre­ci­ate the impact of iso­lated changes across the entire network.

HSARC’s focus on ana­lytic sys­tems analy­sis helps to ensure that the appro­pri­ate scales are being con­sid­ered when per­form­ing research and analy­sis in the health care sec­tor. This atten­tion to sys­tems inte­gra­tion dri­ves strate­gic inno­va­tions that result in sus­tained impacts on per­for­mance and efficiency.