Jennifer L. Hefner - Böcker

The mission of healthcare organizations has undergone a remarkable transformation from curing disease to caring for the well-being of populations. While health care policy has explored this domain before, notably in Health Maintenance Organizations, the current efforts to create Patient-Centered Medical Homes (PCMHs) and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) represent a broader effort to move organizational responsibilities towards population health and care management. Volume 16 of AHCM presents papers that explore this topic across various levels of the healthcare system and employing multiple research designs including case studies, theoretical pieces, secondary data analyses, survey research and qualitative methodologies. Aspects of health care organization discussed in this volume include the PCMH, ACOs, integration with the public health and mental health systems, hospital-physician alignment, and resource planning. Population health management is presented as a factor driving these organizational changes and as a mechanism to facilitate this change.

The 20th volume of Advances in Health Care Management showcases how health care management research helps to further understand grand challenges in health care: what they are, why they exist, the consequences that they have, and what can be done to address them. Grand challenges are large, unresolved problems. “Grand health care challenges” include current events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing challenges related to the quadruple aim of health care: improving the health of populations, reducing the cost of healthcare, improving patient care experiences, and improving the experience of working in health care. The book demonstrates that these challenges are amenable to organizational and managerial solutions, and therefore health care management research has many important lessons to contribute.For this volume, The Contributions of Health Care Management to Grand Health Care Challenges, we define health care management as the planning, direction, and coordination of health services and the management of health care professionals. Included chapters consider five grand challenges facing the health care sector: (1) caring for vulnerable populations; (2) maintaining the health care workforce; (3) translating innovation into practice; (4) sustaining organizations; and (5) navigating pandemics. Each challenge is discussed in its own section and addressed by two chapters that offer different perspectives and approaches to the challenge. Across chapters a variety of methodologies are used including ethnographic case studies, survey data analysis, interviews, literature review, and informed commentary. Together, the chapters in this volume synthesize current information in the field, direct future research efforts, and generate actionable insights for managers and policymakers.

This book contains two Open Access chapters.The 21st volume of Advances in Health Care Management presents informed commentaries solicited from leaders across the field of health care management. Each chapter tackles a specific health care challenge, describing the state of the research on the challenge, identifying appropriate organizational innovations to respond to the challenge, and setting out a future research agenda. Expert authors consider what is known, what is not known, and what is needed to fill the gaps and advance knowledge. Responding to The Grand Challenges in Healthcare Via Organizational Innovation explores in detail varied scenarios and suggestions for dealing with unexpected crises, improving diversity, equity and inclusion in health care, building strategic alliances for inter-sector collaboration, as well as analyzing organizational governance and physician financial risk models.

This book contains an Open Access chapter.Healthcare organizations today face widespread change as they confront varied grand challenges in uncertain environments. Leaders in healthcare require a comprehensive understanding of effective approaches to organizational change, yet the theoretical and practical landscape is evolving rapidly.Volume 22 of Advances in Health Care Management focuses on environmental uncertainty and the responsiveness of health care organizations, the mechanisms of change and how leaders within organizations frame and execute change, and investigates organizational preparedness and response in the face of acute crisis. The authors highlight the key ways in which organizations must orient toward, and build adaptive resilience to weather, an environment of persistent uncertainty and change.