Variance analysis and handling of clinical pathway: An overview of the state of knowledge

Clinical pathway is a multi-disciplinary treatment plan and work mode, which is favorable for improving healthcare service quality and reducing medical costs. Most of references demonstrate that variance analysis and handling is the key to clinical pathway management. Thus, the clinical pathway variance has become the focus of scholars. This paper uses the text mining technique to present a literature review of 496 academic articles in the field of clinical pathway variance analysis and handling, which published between 1994 and 2018. Moreover, this paper conducts a bibliometric analysis to visualize the clinical pathway variance research. In variance analysis and handling, there are a lot of imprecise knowledge and fuzzy relations to be reasoned with knowledge of different domains. In this study, methods of clinical pathway variance analysis and handling are illustrated. In addition, this paper points out the limitations of each method. Based on the results, the future prospects of clinical pathway variance analysis and handling research is proposed.