<P></P><P>Healthcare Organizations offer significant opportunities for change and improvement in their overall performance. Hospitals and clinics are generally large, complex, and inefficient, and need serious development in process workflow and management systems, which will ultimately lead to better patient and financial outcomes. The National Academy of Medicine has stated that hospital systems are broken, and that they must begin by "¿ improving hospital efficiency and patient flow, and using operational management methods and information technologies." In fact, costs and quality are two of the important aspects of the "triple aim" in healthcare.</P><P></P><P>One area that offers significant potential for improvement is through the application of performance improvement methods to patient and process flows. Performance improvement has a significant impact on a hospital¿s over financial and strategic performance. Performance improvement involves the deployment of quantitative and sc