Chapter 12 A Framework for Healthcare Planning and Control Erwin W. Hans 1 , Mark van Houdenhoven 2 , Peter J.H. Hulshof 1,3 1 Center for Healthcare Operations Improvement & Research, dep. Operational Methods for Production & Logistics, University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands 2 Haga Ziekenhuis, Den Haag, the Netherlands 3 Reinier de Graaf Groep, Delft, the Netherlands Abstract Rising expenditures spur healthcare organizations to organize their pro- cesses more efficiently and effectively. Unfortunately, healthcare planning and control lags behind manufacturing planning and control. We analyze existing planning and control concepts or frameworks for healthcare operations manage- ment and find that they do not address various important planning and control problems. We conclude that they only focus on hospitals and are too narrow, fo- cusing on a single managerial area, such as resource capacity planning, or ignoring hierarchical levels. We propose a modern framework for healthcare planning and control that integrates all managerial areas in healthcare delivery operations and all hierarchical levels of control, to ensure completeness and coherence of respon- sibilities for every managerial area. The framework can be used to structure the various planning and control functions and their interaction. It is applicable to an individual department, an entire healthcare organization, and to a complete supply chain of cure and care providers. The framework can be used to identify and posi- tion various types of managerial problems, to demarcate the scope of organization interventions and to facilitate a dialogue between clinical staff and managers. Acknowledgments This research is supported by the Dutch Technology Foundation STW, ap- plied science division of NWO and the Technology Program of the Ministry of Economic Af- fairs. 12.1 Introduction Planning and control in healthcare have received an increased amount of attention over the last ten years, both in practice and in the literature due to an increase in demand for healthcare and increasing expenditures (OECD, 2011). As a result, healthcare organizations are trying to re-organize processes for efficiency and ef- fectiveness. It is therefore not surprising that the Operations Research / Manage-