Survival strategies in the era of managed care

The era of managed care has forced an unprecedented restructuring of the health care environment. As hospitals downsize in response, materiel managers should consider adopting strategies that may help ensure their survival, including innovative approaches to supply management and the development of individual responses that will best position them to succeed in this new reality.     

Strategic imperatives for managing materiel into the next century

The next century of opportunity is less than a decade away. Materiel management must involve itself in the strategic changes occurring within the health care industry and its respective institutions. Those materiel managers who are aggressively ensuring that their operations are supported by a well-developed and well-orchestrated operational infrastructure are now well positioned to address the future challenges of this decade. Unfortunately, many other materiel managers are focusing their attention and efforts solely on the management of materiel for which they currently have control. Materiel managers must develop an acute awareness of the support needs of their respective organizations. Those who are not apprehensive about venturing from the traditional materiel management world will be exposed to incredible educational opportunities and will receive responsibilities of unparalleled organizational importance.     

Materiel management reengineering: value creation through innovation

By reengineering their department's core processes, materiel managers can expand their role in the health care setting while realizing significant cost savings. Using a team model, Inova Health System materiel management staff integrated their processes for vendor selection, purchasing, inventory reduction, and utilization across three hospitals and ancillary services. An integrated approach at all levels of the organization gained buy-in from administrators and staff systemwide.     

Managed competition

People don't like change. That includes materiel managers, administrators, and clinical providers. Managed competition or managed care will work if, and only if, the American professions and the American public recognize the value of highly educated and qualified clinical and nonclinical providers and if the health care industry responds in kind.     

The new role of material managers in hospital strategic planning

The future direction and challenges of hospital strategic planning require the knowledge and skills of material managers. The approach taken in participating in hospital planning efforts is not as important as the level of involvement. Understanding the strategic planning process at the hospital and knowing what information is critical to that process will improve the ability of the material manager to become an active participant and a valuable contributor to the strategic planning process. Cost management will continue to be the overriding concern of the health care industry in the 1990s. Hospitals will reorganize to control cost and improve productivity, while striving to maintain the quality of care. Material managers must align their departments with hospital strategic goals and assert their new roles in achieving those goals.     

The contractual and value relevance of reported earnings in a dividend-focused environment

This study investigates the relevance of reported earnings in the context of an institutional environment, i.e., Switzerland, in which investors focus on dividends. In conjunction with a dividend focus, the financial reporting environment faced by Swiss firms provides their managers with more accounting discretion than managers of Anglo-Saxon firms typically have. From a contractual perspective, dividendbased earnings management is expected since Swiss corporate law explicitly states that dividends, which must be voted on by stockholders, are to be based upon a firm's reported earnings. From a value perspective, thin trading conditions and a long-term investment horizon are expected to increase the importance of dividend payments and to influence the informativeness of reported earnings. Results indicate that Swiss managers do engage in dividend-based earnings management, that earnings quality signals are used by managers to voluntarily constrain their accounting choices and that the value relevance of earnings is conditional upon dividend payments.     

Literacy: a problem that managers must handle

Patient and employee illiteracy is a problem that health care managers must deal with. More than half of all Americans may be unable to read and understand written materials used in hospitals, clinics, and other health care facilities. There is a mismatch between employees' and patients' reading level and the reading level of most written materials used by health care facilities. This can lead to noncompliance with treatment, missed appointments, wrong dosage of medications, uninformed consent, and undo fear among patients. Employees who are unable to read directions or policies and procedures are not able to do their jobs efficiently. There are things that managers can do to make written materials more user-friendly.     

The Relationship Between HR Capabilities and Quality of Patient Care: The Mediating Role of Proactive Work Behaviors

Based on theoretical frameworks of resource‐based theory, dynamic capabilities, and behavioral perspective on human resource management, we developed a multidimensional construct of human resource (HR) capabilities and tested its relationship with quality of patient care using a national sample of U.S. hospitals. The data on HR capabilities were collected from senior managers (421 individuals nested in 279 hospitals) representing both the administrative and clinical sides of the hospitals. The data on quality of patient care were gathered from two unique sources—patients of 207 hospitals who reported the data via the hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey, and 421 senior managers of 279 hospitals. Our analyses using structural equation modeling suggests that the positive relationship of HR capabilities with quality of patient care is mediated by proactive behaviors of health care workers. Implications of the study findings for research and practice are discussed. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Management of nursing homes using data envelopment analysis.

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to evaluate the relative technical efficiency and assist in the management of a chain of nursing homes. As with any DEA model, variables chosen are particularly important. The study looks at two possibly critical issues. The first is the appropriateness of models that include only financial and economic measures to evaluate administrators when quality care is an expected output. The second issue is the appropriateness of using noncontrollable variables, in this case operating income, to evaluate administrators. We show how efficiency scores differ when quality variables and/or operating income are included. We also demonstrate the usefulness of DEA information to both the home administrator and chain managers for improving operating efficiency.     

Addressing blood and body fluid spills: conserving time and resources during surface disinfecting

As new issues and areas of concern arise in the health care industry, such as the potential transmission of HIV and HBV, adaptive measures will continue to be developed to assist health care professionals in their mission to provide expert medical care for patients and safe environments in which to practice. Health care institutions must commit to exploration of the advances in infection control that employ improved measures to manage the cleaning and disinfecting of spill incidents involving blood and/or body fluids and the disinfecting of contaminated surfaces. Together, product manufacturers and health care workers will discover new ways to save time, money, and resources. The goal for health care administrators should be to focus on products that stress simplicity, efficiency, cost containment, and, most important, the safety of staff and patients.     

如何增强企业管理人员的压力管理

当前,社会竞争愈演愈烈,使得企业管理者的压力与日俱增,背负过大的压力不仅会影响管理人员的身心健康,而且也会给企业的健康持续发展带来不利影响。本文通过对企业实施压力管理的重要性进行分析,并提出压力管理应遵循的原则,进而提出增强企业管理人员压力管理的策略。     

The new nurse manager: partner in managing costs and quality

Today's nurse manager is a leader in the 1990s health care delivery system. Collaborating with managers throughout the organization, the nurse manager calls upon skills and advanced education to carry out functions in the areas of clinical systems management, human resource management, environmental management, and financial management. This article describes this health care management role and presents case studies where collaboration with other disciplines was successful.     

Motivating faculty through transactional and transformational leadership strategies

The use of both transactional and transformational leadership strategies can have a tremendous impact on the dynamics of organizational agility and subsequent competitive advantage. For educational institutions, organizational agility refers to the ability of administration and faculty to identify, acknowledge, and adapt to factors important to academic quality, quality of instruction, and overall learning experiences. When it comes to motivating faculty performance, both transactional and transformational leadership styles are important. From a transactional perspective, faculty appreciate administrators who clearly communicate both university and departmental goals. For true motivation, administrators must seek to affect faculty on an intrinsic level where personal efficacy is raised through the successful accomplishment of objectives. A model for college steering committees and a specific faculty training program for sharper instructional focus are presented.     

东方管理学视角的企业知识型员工管理

知识经济时代,企业的核心资源是知识型员工。本文认为企业应结合知识型员工的特点,将东方管理学的核心思想———"人为为人"思想有机地运用到管理中,注重从"利他"角度着眼,追求让知识型员工达到关系和谐与身心健康的目标,让企业达到持续提高工作绩效和竞争能力的目标。文中探索的主要实现途径包括:树立知识型员工是第一客户的理念;建立服从知识与服从权威同样重要的舆论氛围;管理者要以身作则,率先垂范;充分授权,注重沟通,提高知识型员工的参与感;识别需求,有效激励,探索按知分配;开展以提升创新能力为核心的培训开发;关爱知识型员工的身心健康;从有利于知识型员工发挥价值的角度,优化改造组织结构。     

Adjusting to not being "on top": making effective use of transitions

In today's health care environment, it is possible even for the successful health care manager to be fired or demoted. To ensure continued success, the manager must view a termination or demotion as a normal transition of life and find ways to "move on". Given today's volatile environment, anticipatory planning for job loss or job change, which includes attention to continued professional training, visioning changes in health care, and maintaining strong professional contacts, is an imperative.     

商业银行绩效管理的权变策略——HU理论的灵活运用

商业银行的绩效管理体现了银行的价值导向和战略发展方向。在全球面临金融危机的背景下,我国商业银行的经营环境发生了根本性变化,传统的内部绩效管理机制应随之而调整。在新的历史条件下,如何有效设立商业银行的绩效管理目标,让各级行长和经理跳起来摘苹果,并是实践中的一个现实问题。本文利用HU理论的基本原理,提出商业银行绩效管理的权变策略。     

European Works Councils and the dark side of managing worker voice

Drawing from case study research, the article explores managerial strategies in a UK‐based European Works Council (EWC), but from the perspective of workers' representatives. This methodological approach offers an alternative set of lens through which to view managerial strategy from the standpoint of those it is meant to affect. The evidence suggests that employers' representatives in central management appear to be proactively fragmenting worker voice, arguably in order to convert the EWC into a business‐friendly instrument and to assert managerial control. However, there is no empirical basis for arguing that such tactics yield organisational benefits. The employers' perceived strategies reflect the traditional cultural antagonisms that are historically played out between workers and managers in the particular sector in which the firm is embedded. The article has practical implications for HR managers who are viewed, rightly or wrongly, with suspicion and distrust by employee representatives.     

Public Management as a University Discipline in New European Union Member States

Abstract

Many market-type mechanisms were introduced in the public administration reforms in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Therefore public administration higher education in CEE should prepare not only classical public administrators but also public managers to operate in this new environment. This paper summarizes our research results on three new Central European members. The focus is on the scale of public management (PM) programmes, on the proportion of PM courses in the curricula of accredited PM programmes and on the dominant teaching approaches.     

A model of diffusion and implementation: An exploratory study of managerial innovation in Colombia

The focus of this paper is characterized by (1) an examination of the factors related to the “anticipation” of potential innovations in any organizational setting and (2) the identification of strategies for the diffusion and implementation of operations research/management science (OR/MS) techniques in a particular developing region. Based on the methodology used in studying change (innovation) in health care systems, a managerial innovation model incorporating four main components [the executive, the organization, the task environment of the organization and change agent(s), including the OR/MS manager and outside consultants] is developed and examined in terms of data obtained from top executives and other managers in forty industrial firms in Cali, Colombia. In the model developed the process of innovation is decomposed into the levels of; (a) attitudes and motivations of the executive, (b) “readiness” to take action, (c) action characteristics, (d) triggering cues and (e) actions taken and evaluation (feedback loop). The model was found useful for providing predictions indicating areas to which intervention and “marketing” of OR/MS strategies should be devoted. Overall, the study provides a base for comparative and longitudinal studies.     

An application of organizational input–output analysis to hospital management

The main components of an acute-care hospital and the relationships among them are used to construct an organizational input–output model similar to those based on the interdependence among industries in an economy. The basic model makes it possible to forecast the personnel needed by each component in order to provide the services expected from it by the external environment and by the other hospital departments. Extensions of the basic model can be applied to health care organizations in general, used to analyze the implications of different organizational reforms or extended to include physical, financial, and other resources. The methods presented and the results obtained are of particular interest to managers of health care organizations, managers in general, and researchers in the theory of organization.