Management Practices in U.S. Hospitals

描述(由申请人提供)：为什么一些医院的护理质量比其他医院更好？众所周知，美国的医疗保健系统存在效率低下、协调不力、医疗质量高度不稳定等问题。研究文献集中在一些可能影响质量的因素上，但对医院内部管理的方式知之甚少。这个应用程序寻求资金来进行一项调查，该调查将产生一组关于美国大样本医院管理实践的全新数据。在管理实践中，我们指的是用于指导医院运营、绩效衡量、临床关系和员工激励的政策、制度和标准。衡量这些做法并不容易通过传统的调查或依赖行政数据来实现。我们将使用一种创新的调查方法，这是它在获取有关组织实践的真实信息和最大限度地减少对有利分数的反应的能力方面的重大突破。该应用程序的总体目标是衡量美国医院的管理实践及其与患者结果的关联。这项拟议研究背后的具体假设是，有一些管理技术与更好的患者结果相关，但并未在医院部门广泛采用或传播。这项调查及其与医院、患者结果和质量指标的现有数据的联系，将解决关于定义医院如何运营的政策和实践的知识方面的一个重要差距。这项拟议的研究将是第一次打开美国医院管理的黑匣子，并评估其对患者预后的重要性。这项建议有三个具体目标：目标1.调查和衡量美国800家医院的管理实践。目标2.解释为什么不同医院的管理做法不同。目的3.评估管理实践得分与病人护理质量的关系。这项研究旨在提高对这些工具的理解、使用频率以及它们的明显有效性，以便好的工具能够得到推广并更快地被医院采用，最终目标是改善患者的预后。

DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant): Why is the quality of care in some hospitals better than others? It is well documented that the U.S. health care system is marked by problems of inefficiency, poor coordination, and highly variable quality of care. The research literature has focused on a number of factors that could affect quality, but relatively little is known about the ways in which hospitals are internally managed. This application seeks funding to conduct a survey that will produce an entirely new set of data on management practices in a large sample of U.S. hospitals. By management practices, we mean the policies, systems, and standards that are used to guide hospital operations, performance measurement, clinical relationships, and employee incentives. Measuring these practices is not easily accomplished through traditional surveys or reliance on administrative data. We will use an innovative survey methodology that represents a significant breakthrough in its ability to elicit true information on organizational practices and to minimize the gaming of responses toward favorable scores. The overall goal of this application is to measure management practices in U.S. hospitals and their association with patient outcomes. The specific hypothesis behind the proposed research is that there are managerial techniques that are associated with better patient outcomes, but not widely adopted or disseminated within the hospital sector. The survey, and its linkage with existing data on hospitals, patient outcomes, and quality indicators, will address an important gap in the knowledge about the policies and practices that define how a hospital operates. The proposed study would be the first to open the .black box of U.S. hospital management, and to assess its importance in patient outcomes. This proposal has three specific aims: Aim 1. Survey and measure management practices in 800 U.S. hospitals. Aim 2. Explain why management practices vary across hospitals. Aim 3. Assess the relationship between management practice scores and the quality of patient care. This research aims to improve the understanding of these tools, their frequency of use as well as their apparent effectiveness, so that good tools can be promoted and more quickly adopted by hospitals, with the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes.