This book discusses current health care challenges and new strategies for innovative solutions in this area from an interdisciplinary perspective of health care management, business economics, and medicine. It presents the idea of a “boundaryless hospital”, a conceptual model of a patient-centric, value-based health network that overcomes typical sectorial, organizational, and geographical boundaries and offers greater efficiency and better quality outcomes for patients. Effective health care for a growing and aging population is a major challenge for economies all over the world. New breakthroughs in medical technology and pharmaceuticals as well as digitization provide scope for more efficiency and for a better quality of health care. Novel organization forms and management concepts are key for coping with the increasing cost pressure observed in most health care systems. The contributions in this volume present innovative strategies for developing and implementing the concept of a boundaryless hospital. They highlight experiences from various countries and with different treatments. The book project was initiated and carried out by the Center for Advanced Studies in Management (CASiM), the interdisciplinary research center of HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management for business administration in the 21st century.

Management practices within the healthcare sector are shaped by a multitude of professional, social, political and technical factors. This Elgar Encyclopedia of Healthcare Management provides clarity with holistic definitions and descriptions of essential healthcare systems, leadership and administration. Both engaging with new principles of care and existing themes within managerial practices, it offers a broad look into management within the ever-evolving sector.

International Encyclopedia of Public Health, Second Edition, Seven Volume Set is an authoritative and comprehensive guide to the major issues, challenges, methods, and approaches of global public health. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this new edition combines complementary scientific fields of inquiry, linking biomedical research with the social and life sciences to address the three major themes of public health research, disease, health processes, and disciplines. This book helps readers solve real-world problems in global and local health through a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach. Covering all dimensions of the field, from the details of specific diseases, to the organization of social insurance agencies, the articles included cover the fundamental research areas of health promotion, economics, and epidemiology, as well as specific diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and reproductive health. Additional articles on the history of public health, global issues, research priorities, and health and human rights make this work an indispensable resource for students, health researchers, and practitioners alike. Provides the most comprehensive, high-level, internationally focused reference work available on public health Presents an invaluable resource for both researchers familiar with the field and non-experts requiring easy-to-find, relevant, global information and a greater understanding of the wider issues Contains interdisciplinary coverage across all aspects of public health Incorporates biomedical and health social science issues and perspectives Includes an international focus with contributions from global domain experts, providing a complete picture of public health issues

In recent years, new applications on computer-aided technologies for telemedicine have emerged. Therefore, it is essential to capture this growing research area concerning the requirements of telemedicine. This book presents the latest findings on soft computing, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and related computer-aided technologies for enhanced telemedicine and e-health. Furthermore, this volume includes comprehensive reviews describing procedures and techniques, which are crucial to support researchers in the field who want to replicate these methodologies in solving their related research problems. On the other hand, the included case studies present novel approaches using computer-aided methods for enhanced telemedicine and e-health. This volume aims to support future research activities in this domain. Consequently, the content has been selected to support not only academics or engineers but also to be used by healthcare professionals.

The introduction in Ireland in 2008 of the clinical directorate model as the accepted method for the organisation of health services and the involvement of clinicians in the management of these services is one of the most significant developments to happen in the Irish health services in recent years. It poses major challenges for all clinical and medical professions. In Clinical Directorates in the Irish Health Services, Yvonne O'Shea explores the history and evolution of clinical directorates over the last thirty years in order to arrive at a deep understanding of the thinking behind them and the impact they are likely to have on Irish health services. Clinical Directorates in the Irish Health Services is about making the right choices in the management of health services. It suggests that the involvement of clinicians in management and in making decisions about how resources are used, in acute and primary settings, is the most efficient way to guarantee the effective use of resources and the safety of patients. Clinical Directorates in the Irish Health Services provides Irish clinical professionals with a resource to assist them in understanding the clinical directorate model and their own role within it.

Health care is everywhere under tremendous pressure with regard to efficiency, safety, and economic viability - to say nothing of having to meet various political agendas - and has responded by eagerly adopting techniques that have been useful in other industries, such as quality management, lean production, and high reliability. This has on the whole been met with limited success because health care as a non-trivial and multifaceted system differs significantly from most traditional industries. In order to allow health care systems to perform as expected and required, it is necessary to have concepts and methods that are able to cope with this complexity. Resilience engineering provides that capacity because its focus is on a system’s overall ability to sustain required operations under both expected and unexpected conditions rather than on individual features or qualities. Resilience engineering’s unique approach emphasises the usefulness of performance variability, and that successes and failures have the same aetiology. This book contains contributions from acknowledged international experts in health care, organisational studies and patient safety, as well as resilience engineering. Whereas current safety approaches primarily aim to reduce or eliminate the number of things that go wrong, Resilient Health Care aims to increase and improve the number of things that go right. Just as the WHO argues that health is more than the absence of illness, so does Resilient Health Care argue that safety is more than the absence of risk and accidents. This can be achieved by making use of the concrete experiences of resilience engineering, both conceptually (ways of thinking) and practically (ways of acting).

This book explores in depth the phenomenon of user innovation in healthcare. In particular, the book sheds light on patient innovation, whereby patients and/or caregivers proactively develop and diffuse new products and services that provide health and quality of life benefits by addressing gaps in existing market offerings. The aim is to clarify the key characteristics of these innovative processes and to offer practitioners and policymakers tangible bottom-up evidence, solutions, and ideas that will assist in improving health systems, organizations, and practices. A number of important and interesting research questions are addressed, casting light on the types of products and services that tend to be developed by patient innovators, the typical profile of these innovators, the role played by firms, institutions, and health professionals, and the ways in which digital technologies support the dissemination of innovations among patient communities and within the industry. Beyond academic scholars and policymakers, the book will be of high value for students on master’s programs in both medical sciences and business and economics.