The health care sector represents one of the largest and most rapidly growing IT markets in the world. Health care lends itself readily to IT entrepreneurship in a number of ways, but also poses some unique challenges. Many of these facets are illustrated through the experiences of ShiftMarket, a startup company developing and promoting technology-driven solutions for staffing hard-to-fill hospital shifts. Started without any external funding, ShiftMarket negotiated a strong beginning by pursuing technology transfer in collaboration with a U.S. hospital rather than building from scratch. At the time of this case study, ShiftMarket is facing some unexpected challenges and must re-evaluate its strategy moving forward.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop a customised model to measure the performance of housekeeping (HK) services in Sri Lankan health-care facilities.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory sequential mixed approach was adopted in the study to collect and analyse data. A case study strategy was adopted in the initial phase to explore the current HK practices, and to determine the applicable key performance indicators (KPIs) found through literature. Semi-structured interviews were used as the data collection method in the selected case studies. A questionnaire survey was conducted in the next phase to verify the validity of case study findings. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics. One sample t-test was used to identify significant KPIs and to formulate the customised performance measurement (PM) model.
Findings
The study identified and ranked 46 KPIs, which can be used to measure the performance of HK divisions of health-care facilities, in balanced scorecard perspectives. The findings also revealed that the KPIs determined using the model have a significant impact on implementing effective health-care HK services and could be used to measure both real and subjective cleanliness.
Practical implications
The developed model can be used for numerous PM requirements in health-care setups in both developing and developed countries. The KPIs determined using this model can be presented in quality audits and government inspections as proof of effective HK management. The HK managers of the health-care sector can effectively monitor the performance of their divisions using the proposed PM model and this model can be customised to match the other facilities management service divisions.
Originality/value
Many studies focus on overall health-care PM. This study expands the knowledge on HK PM in the health-care sector by presenting a collection of performance indicators centred on HK function.
Abstract
Design is one of the core business processes involved in product development, and approaches such as Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Axiomatic Design (AD) have been developed for improving its effectiveness and efficiency. However, they are limited in their provision of structure and formalism to the mapping of customer needs to product requirements. This is in part due to lack of identifying characteristics of customer needs. The characteristics of Solution Space™, consisting of pairs of opportunities and constraints, address partially this by providing a framework for identifying sources of product requirements. This paper reports the results of a case study, within the UK health care sector, related to the design of an artificial knee joint. In particular, it is shown how AD and the framework consisting of pairs of opportunities and constraints can be used in conjunction with each other to establish a view of the system of which the artificial knee joint forms part. The development of such a view helps to ensure that characteristics of potential stakeholders’ needs are more appropriately identified. This is a prerequisite for the establishment of more formal relationships between stakeholders’ needs and product requirements.
The aim: The purpose of the study is to: a) determine the purpose of budget transfers in the field of medicine; b) determine the characteristics that characterize budget transfers in the health sector; c) establish the significance of budget transfers in those jurisdictions in which the system of health insurance operates.
Materials and methods: The empirical basis of the study was the Report of the Minister of Health of Singapore, Information on the subvention section for 2019-2020 in Hong
Kong, the Budget forecast of the US Congress for 2019, Reports of the Accounts Chamber of Ukraine for 2017, 2018 and 2019. Within the framework of this study, the following special legal methods of scientific knowledge were applied: comparative legal method, a normative-dogmatic method and a logical-legal method. The “case study” method was also widely used in this research.
Conclusions: Budget transfers in the field of medicine is a socially important institution of budget law. Budget transfers in the health care sector can be characterized by the
following features: a) sectoral nature (health care sector) b) specific budgetary directions (movement of funds from the state to local budgets) c) widespread use (used both in states with medical insurance and in states where the health sector is entirely publicly funded).
Human resources management from the perspective of availability of knowledge: Case study of the health care sector
