Do patients value a hospital's innovativeness reputation? A multi-method approach to assess the relative importance of innovativeness reputation in patients' hospital choice

How to direct patients to high-volume hospitals: exploring the influencing drivers

BACKGROUND

During the last decade, planning concentration policies have been applied in healthcare systems. Among them, attention has been given to guiding patients towards high-volume hospitals that perform better, acccording to the volume-outcome association. This paper analyses which factors drive patients to choose big or small hospitals (with respect to the international standards of volumes of activity).

METHODS

We examined colon cancer surgeries performed in Piedmont (Italy) between 2004 and 2018. We categorised the patient choice of the hospital as big/small, and we used this outcome as main dependent variable of descriptive statistics, tests and logistic regression models. As independent variables, we included (i) patient characteristics, (ii) characteristics of the closest big hospital (which should be perceived as the most immediate to be chosen), and (iii) territorial characteristics (i.e., characteristics of the set of hospitals among which the patient can choose). We also considered interactions among variables to examine which factors influence all or a subset of patients.

RESULTS

Our results confirm that patient personal characteristics (such as age) and hospital characteristics (such as distance) play a primary role in the patient decision process. The findings seem to support the importance of closing small hospitals when they are close to big hospitals, although differences emerge between rural and urban areas. Other interesting insights are provided by examining the interactions between factors, e.g., patients affected by comorbidities are more responsive to hospital quality even though they are distant.

CONCLUSIONS

Reorganising healthcare services to concentrate them in high-volume hospitals emerged as a crucial issue more than forty years ago. Evidence suggests that concentration strategies guarantee better clinical performance. However, in healthcare systems in which patients are free to choose where to be treated, understanding patients' behaviour and what drives them towards the most effective choice is of paramount importance. Our study builds on previous research that has already analysed factors influencing patients' choices, and takes a step further to enlighten which factors drive patients to choose between a small or a big hospital (in terms of volume). The results could be used by decision makers to design the best concentration strategy.

Employee involvement in innovation activities in hospitals: How perception matters

Employees are a very important source of innovation and essential for the generation, dissemination and implementation of these ideas throughout the organization. This is especially relevant when considering innovation in services during service (co-) creation such as within the healthcare sector. However, perceived employee involvement in innovation (EII) and between stakeholder group interactions in hospitals has not yet been studied in detail. This paper addresses the following research questions: "How do different employee groups perceive their involvement in the innovation process in hospitals and how do their actual involvement levels differ?" and (2) "How do different employee groups perceive their interaction with other employee groups in the innovation process and how do their actual interactions differ?" We analyzed a single typical German research hospital and conducted episodic interviews with employees representing different staff groups. We revealed that while all groups of employees are involved in innovation activities, perception of their involvement in innovation activities differs widely. There is a gap between perception and actual involvement particularly for lower level employees such as nurses. Further, their interaction differs among employee groups and innovation takes place in-group, rather than through group interaction. With our paper, we add to the understanding of perceived EII in hospitals and discuss measures for hospital management to increase EII.