May 3, 2012
“Background: Middle managers have received little attention in extant health services research, yet they may have a key role in healthcare innovation implementation. The gap between evidence of effective care and practice may be attributed in part to poor healthcare innovation implementation. Investigating middle managers’ role in healthcare innovation implementation may reveal an opportunity for improvement. In this paper, we present a theory of middle managers’ role in healthcare innovation implementation to fill the gap in the literature and to stimulate research that empirically examines middle managers’ influence on innovation implementation in healthcare organizations.
Discussion: Extant healthcare innovation implementation research has primarily focused on the roles of physicians and top managers. Largely overlooked is the role of middle managers. We suggest that middle managers influence healthcare innovation implementation by diffusing information, synthesizing information, mediating between strategy and day-to-day activities, and selling innovation implementation.
Summary: Teamwork designs have become popular in healthcare organizations. Because middle managers oversee these team initiatives, their potential to influence innovation implementation has grown. Future research should investigate middle managers’ role in healthcare innovation implementation. Findings may aid top managers in leveraging middle managers’ influence to improve the effectiveness of healthcare innovation implementation.”
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Implementation process, Management | No Comments
July 4, 2011
“Senior decision-makers in the Canadian healthcare system have to continuously make significant, and complex, policy and program decisions. However, it appears that, often, the evidence they have available is fairly simple descriptive information, collected for operational purposes. Trying to solve complex problems with fairly simple data may lead to suboptimal decisions. This article presents a new knowledge development system (KDS) that should allow senior decision-makers and others to manage smarter and take their decision-making to the next level. A KDS represents the integration of information systems, and research and analysis, into one system. It can generate sophisticated, strategic information around complex issues, which should ultimately lead to wiser decisions. This article describes the KDS, provides an example of a current KDS and concludes by presenting a self-diagnostic tool for decision-makers to allow them to determine whether their organization could benefit from a KDS.”
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Decision making, Management | No Comments
May 11, 2011
“In 2000, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) convened a group of patient safety experts to envision and specify the characteristics of an ideal medication system. An important element of such a system was the strong commitment of senior leadership to a culture that encouraged safety. The author conceived of WalkRounds™ during these IHI meetings, as a tool to connect senior leaders with people working on the front line — both as a way to educate senior leadership about safety issues and to signal to front-line workers the senior leaders’ commitment to creating a culture of safety.”
“This tool describes the format for WalkRounds™ and includes suggestions about questions for leaders to ask staff, which senior leaders should participate, and where to conduct WalkRounds™ in the organization. Review and modify the instructions as needed for your organization before initiating the WalkRounds™.”
Posted in Multimedia, READ Portal | Tagged with Management, Safety | No Comments
