ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the healthcare delivery system in the United States and an introduction to how to start to address some of these challenges through effective capacity management, scheduling of resources, and analytics. Healthcare financing is concerned with who pays for which services and how. This includes insurance and provider compensation. Determining how to allocate costs to be used for billing in healthcare can be a challenging task. The chapter discusses the various components of the healthcare delivery system. Improving patient flow through a facility can help reduce wait times and overcrowding, promote better patient handoffs, improve financial conditions for the provider, and avoid delays. Process mapping is a useful framework for characterizing patient flow. Healthcare data are essential for the provision and implementation of healthcare. Once a patient is treated by the provider, a bill is typically sent to the payer for services provided.
