Program management as a way to structure hospital management has been attracting growing interest. Numerous hospitals are introducing it. West Park Hospital was one of the first hospitals to adopt program management in 1991 and mount a rigorous evaluation of the new approach, one which relied on external evaluators. This article reviews the emergence of program management in the hospital sector and reports on the evaluation of West Park's experience.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
MacStravicR.S.1986. Product line administration in hospitals. Health Care Management Review11(2): 35–44.
2.
HeysselR.1984. Decentralized management in a teaching hospital. New England Journal of Medicine310(22): 1477–1480.
HarberB.W. and EniG.O.1989. Issues for consideration in establishing a program management structure. Healthcare Management Forum2(3): 6–13.
6.
LaveJ.R.JacobsP., and MarkelF.1991. Ontario's hospital transitional funding initiative: An overview and assessment. Healthcare Management Forum4(4): 3–11.
7.
MacKenzieT.A.ReynoldsD., and Greenaway-CoatesA.1992. Hospital reimbursement in Alberta: Outcomes management is on the way. Healthcare Management Forum5(4): 21–27.
8.
LaveJ.R. and JacobsP.1993. The attitudes of Ontario hospitals toward transitional funding: Response to a survey. Healthcare Management Forum6(1): 25–32.
9.
MonaghanB.J.AltonL., and AllenD.1992. Transition to program management. Leadership Sept./Oct.: 33–37.
10.
These include the unavailability of non-patient care statistics for rehabilitation staff; variations in the specificity of reporting workload units between individual members of a discipline; vacancy issues; and lack of standardization in data collection methods among disciplines.
