Health Care Organizational Performance: Present and Future Research

Health care organizations are presently attempting to adapt to an increasingly turbulent environment that poses significant challenges to both managers and management scholars. As a result of the unique nature of health care organizations and their external environments, most research and empirical writing is available only in context-specific sources. This paper examines and evaluates research evidence concerning issues that are likely to be crucial in health care management research and practice over the next decade. Specifically, we examine structural and process determinants of the following measures of health care organizational performance: cost efficiency, clinical quality, patient satisfaction, and financial outcomes. Managerial implications of this research are discussed along with some guidelines forfuture research.