Industrial engineering solutions enhance operational efficiency in human and veterinary hospitals: a scoping review

Human and veterinary healthcare systems face many parallel challenges, yet opportunities for cross-sectoral learning remain underexplored. This scoping review aimed to compare healthcare delivery in both domains, highlighting operational inefficiencies, shared challenges, and innovative strategies that may enhance outcomes in both sectors. A search and review of 43,987 articles was conducted across multiple databases. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria and conducting quality assessments, 100 studies were selected for detailed analysis. The review focused on operational elements such as patient scheduling, staffing, electronic health records, patient flow, satisfaction, wait times, length of stay, facility layout, and resource allocation. The review identified recurring inefficiencies in both sectors, notably in scheduling and resource planning. Common operational challenges in healthcare include poor electronic health records integration, suboptimal facility layout, and understaffing. Innovative solutions like improved protocols, Lean Six Sigma, smart scheduling, artificial intelligence, and ergonomics can improve efficiency and patient outcomes. The review findings underscored the potential for shared solutions between human and veterinary healthcare systems. Recognizing and applying successful strategies across both fields could improve operational efficiency, patient satisfaction, and overall quality of care. Veterinary healthcare lags in adopting industrial engineering solutions to solve operational challenges. This review provided invaluable information from the literature and could serve as a blueprint in multiple areas to expedite improvements in veterinary care. Human healthcare systems are much more standardized than veterinary systems and provide multiple potential solutions to improve veterinary care delivery.