Frontiers of Health Services Management最新文献

Women represent an overwhelming majority of the healthcare workforce, yet they are significantly underrepresented in leadership positions, particularly at the executive and board levels. However, women are uniquely positioned to leverage traits such as compassion, transparency, and the ability to foster teamwork to lead organizations into the next phase of contemporary healthcare delivery. In the future, the pace with which women gain access to the C-suite will accelerate as organizations embrace diversity and select the best-qualified leaders in terms of both experience and leadership style that supports organizational culture. While the future for women in healthcare leadership looks bright, many women are currently struggling to reach the executive office, facing glass ceilings, competing priorities, and lack of access to support and guidance. In this article, I discuss the role of women in healthcare leadership and offer practical suggestions on how women can reach the top echelon and achieve their goals and aspirations.

As the healthcare market continues to evolve, technology plays a growing role in an integrated delivery system's ability to provide high-quality, cost-effective care. Healthcare leaders must be proactive and forward-thinking about their technology investments because the financial investment for technology innovation can be significant. Healthcare leaders must deliberately design the role of technology and develop a consistent method for evaluating, identifying, and prioritizing technology investments. The article describes technology's role in a healthcare organization as a window to the organization, a driver of business strategy, and a high-performance enabler. The article also develops a process for building a business case to ensure that an organization's technology investments are well-reasoned and will provide value. In addition, the article discusses the importance of combining people and process reengineering with new technology to exponentially increase the value of an organization. Healthcare leaders must understand the multiple roles of technology and consistently develop a business case when making technology investment decisions.

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is a preeminent leader in pediatric healthcare delivery, research, and education. CHOP has three inpatient locations, 31 primary care centers, 16 ambulatory centers, and four dedicated research buildings. CHOP's health system provides care for children from around the world and close to home in West Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey. Technology innovation has been a key element to the hospital's success during the last 165 years.

Technology plays a role in nearly every aspect of healthcare delivery. Health systems must continually invest in new and existing technology and analytics platforms to scale initiatives, enable innovation, and achieve interoperability to meet the needs and expectations of patients and clinicians while remaining focused on the organization's mission and strategic priorities. In this process, decision-makers must determine how to allocate technological resources to platforms that meet clinical and administrative needs while reducing the need for frequent replacement or reconfiguration. Advances in artificial intelligence and its capabilities add urgency and complexity to technology investment decisions. An important consideration during this process is when to build new technology infrastructure and when to partner with existing companies and buy technology solutions. This case study explores a major academic medical center's approach to that decision, including the factors that influenced it and the outcomes of two solutions that were developed in-house.

The application of technology in precision medicine (i.e., using data to tailor care for specific groups) and machine learning (modeling data to develop new ways to meet particular needs) plays a vital role in population health. And yet, technology alone cannot resolve the challenges presented by the underlying social determinants of health (SDOH) and the structure of healthcare institutions. Progress requires a partnership of stakeholders to build holistic solutions. Typically, a rigid institutional reliance on a sequential process of hypothesis, study, experimentation, and evaluation drives the development of health programs and policies. While this process works in many cases, the results are not always long-lasting. The roots of many health problems persist in their communities, despite expanded funding and advanced resources. In light of this reality, should healthcare leaders do more of what has been done in the past, or should they explore another way-a new way of thinking-to design collaborative, people-driven programs and policies that can improve and sustain the health of their communities? The response presented here and detailed in our book, Public Health and Health Systems Management: A Population Health Perspective (scheduled for publication in 2025 by Health Administration Press), considers healthcare's complex structure and SDOH and promotes the value of design thinking to address those factors.

With so much data available, health system leaders are challenged with sifting through it all to find the most useful information for decision-making. Meritus Health implemented effective approaches to understand, use, and communicate large amounts of data to alleviate some of this burden. These processes include system-wide daily huddles, dashboards, and standardized communication write-ups.

Since the early 2000s, artificial intelligence (AI) has raised concerns regarding its use in healthcare to manage vast amounts of patient data, ensure proper handling, and maintain robust security measures. Nevertheless, contemporary healthcare organizations are exploring ways AI can safely enhance operational efficiency and support their patient populations. Successful, evidence-based utilization relies on a well-defined ambulatory strategy, and operational efficiency must be foundational to that strategy. Patient no-shows and appointment compliance, especially in the context of social determinants of health such as access, present inherent obstacles to patient and provider satisfaction, continuity of care, practice productivity, and the financial sustainability of an organization. To address these obstacles, Berkeley Research Group has been working with Phoebe Physician Group. Their shared objective is twofold: enhance patient encounter volume and the associated revenue. This article provides insights into the steps taken to integrate AI and machine learning to mitigate the problem of no-shows by automatically double-booking appointments for patients with a high probability of not showing up. A glimpse into the outcomes achieved and lessons learned throughout the process also is presented.