ABSTRACT
In order to fully understand the current evolution of the Operations Function within healthcare delivery organizations it is necessary to discuss a little about the evolution of management in the public and healthcare sector. In the late eighties and early nineties public sector all around the world was invested by the so-called New Public Management movement that, basically, argued for the necessity of introducing, in the public sector, organizational models, logics and managerial tools used in the private sector in order to improve the overall performance in the perspective of both efficiency and effectiveness. The limit of this set of reforms is that the budget itself was considered a sort of panacea of all problems and, thereafter, the controller did take up the challenge/responsibility to look into the production processes thus leaving, in this sense, to each clinical director complete autonomy and control over the actual organization of healthcare delivery processes.
