Hospital management games: a taxonomy and extensive review

Hospital management games have gained importance in better planning for scarce resources in times of growing health care demand and increasing technology costs. We classify and investigate the main characteristics of these games from an Operations Research (OR) perspective. Hospital management games model the complex decision making process of internal resource, process, and financial management all influenced by the external hospital environment (e.g., purchasing markets, job markets, legal/political conditions, competition) and simulate situations of the real world. We also highlight the potential of these games for teaching OR in the classroom. Experiencing the advantages of OR may reduce the reservations policy makers have and could make them increasingly open to promoting OR applications in practice. We also disclose potential for new applications.