Project management in hospital environments: a 5-year systematic literature review

Abstract

Health systems have countless examples of adaptations of existing project management approaches to improve hospital operations and deliver value to the patient. This article aims to review the project management publications of the last 5 years, to establish findings in relation to what has been published, to allow the visualization of knowledge gaps and future research to be carried out. Thus, 50 articles and reviews of the last 5 years were initially considered and after the exclusion criteria, 26 articles were listed for review. The analysis allowed identifying publications, sources, universities, countries, and authors that stand out in the theme, in addition to the domains of performance, artefacts used and type of projects. The results indicate publications mainly in two large groups: improvement in service quality and increase in hospital efficiency. Based on this initial study, the authors suggest that further research may be carried out covering project management in the entire health ecosystem, as well as an analysis of the types of health projects and the practices adopted in their management.