When Beaumont Hospital was in its first year of operation, the\ud
then Minister for Health , Dr. Rory O' Hanlon, announced\ud
publicly that aside from our primary purpose of providing a\ud
first-class range of medical facilities and services to the\ud
community we serve, he commission ed Beaumont Hospital to\ud
engage in a pilot development scheme on which to model a\ud
hospital organisation structure and information technology\ud
systems to meet specific objectives. These objectives included,\ud
inter alia, the development of new resource allocating\ud
mechanisms that would enable cost- effectiveness and efficiency\ud
to be monitored and evaluated . An alert administrator will\ud
know that as a public service institution with limited resources\ud
at its disposal and where accountability and delegated\ud
responsibility come into play, a hospital has to be run like a\ud
business. Yet hospitals are vastly more complex than a typical\ud
business. Techniques and strategies that work in manufacturing\ud
and retailing, for example, may well prove inadequate in the\ud
hospital sector