Shortage of staff endangers the Dutch healthcare system. Recent decades saw falling productivity in care delivery, which means that less care is delivered per fte (and, also, at higher cost). The delivery of care is one of the main functions of care providers, which turns the healthcare system into a production system. Insights from fields such as operations management, and also new technologies such as ERP and AI, have had decisive effects on productivity in other sectors, and it is plausible that they could also make a substantial contribution to alleviating the effects of staff shortages in the Dutch healthcare system. The adoption of insights from economics and business, and also of new technologies, is however notoriously difficult and stubborn in healthcare. Insights and advances in operations management are not exploited to their full potential, and as a result, efficiency and productivity in healthcare lag behind other sectors. The focus of this research is not primarily on developing new techniques for operations management in healthcare. Instead, we try to identify practical hurdles that currently impede the adoption and implementation of known best practices, and find ways to overcome such hurdles. The goal is to find out what is needed to take full advantage of the potential of operations management theory in improving productivity and alleviating staffing problems in Dutch healthcare.