LEVERAGING SYSTEM DYNAMICS ARCHETYPES IN CASEMIX SIMULATION MODELING

Unlike that of most management science methodologies, the focus in systems thinking is not on \\\"solving\\\" problems or seeking an optimal solution. Conventional problem solving does not explicitly consider the context of the problem. This implies that the \\\"hospital financial management problem\\\" could be neatly isolated from its environmental and external factors. System thinking and system archetypes, in contrast, acknowledges the messiness of the world and views a problem in the context of its environment. This is one reason why qualitative variables play an important role in system thinking, as these variables represent conditions or phenomena that cannot be measured or accounted in a strictly quantitative approaches. In this paper we present specific healthcare system archetypes which consider such external influences in the healthcare industry in Australia and observe their behavior over time. behavior over time.