Handbook of Healthcare Management

Healthcare management is the profession that provides leadership and direction to organisations that deliver personal health services, and to divisions, departments, units, or services within those organisations. Effective healthcare management involves exercising professional judgment and skills and carrying out the aforementioned managerial functions. Healthcare organisations are complex and dynamic. The nature of organisations requires that managers provide leadership, as well as the supervision and coordination of employees. High performance in hospitals can be the result of governance logics, which, compared to simple board characteristics, are associated with better financial outcomes. Hospitals can influence the emphasis placed on different governance objectives and enhance organisational success by creating boards that are small enough to be effective yet diverse enough to profit from a wide variety of expertise and experience. Moreover, the necessary tasks in producing services in healthcare organisations require the coordination of many highly specialised disciplines that must work together seamlessly. Managers are needed to make certain that organisational tasks are carried out in the best way possible to achieve organisational goals and that appropriate resources, including financial and human resources, are adequate to support the organisation. The book entails the comprehensive analysis of strategic management practices for global healthcare organisations, focusing that insight into and implementation of these practices is indispensable for accomplishment and viable healthcare services. The Handbook examines the intersection of professionalism and complexity science as a source of new insights for improving the health care industry from both a clinical and business point of view. Viewing health care organisations as professional complex adaptive systems suggests leadership tasks for addressing the circumstances that engulf health care. Managers who adopt this view will be able to create new levers for positive movement in their organisations. This handbook will be invaluable to students in both master and doctoral healthcare management programs, as well as faculty and health services researchers, practitioners in both private and public sectors, policy-makers, and public administrators. It contains chapters contributed from well-known and eminent academic authors internationally in their particular area.