In a world characterized by an ever-increasing demand for health services and by dramatic pressures to reduce health spending, scholars in the Operations Management (OM)/Operations Research (OR) fields are called upon to develop new models, methods and approaches to support the design, analysis, and improvement of effective health care delivery systems.Developing these models, however, is a very challenging task. Health care delivery systems, in fact, are inherently complex, as they involve a plurality of stakeholders with conflicting goals and priorities, operating in contexts affected by high variability and-more often than not-limited resources.This special issue of the Flexible Services and Manufacturing (FSM) Journal presents eight papers making a substantial contribution to the OM/OR theory while at the same time successfully addressing common practical problems arising from real-life health care settings.