Does Combining Health Care Hospitality Services Increase Efficiency?

Abstract

Throughout the health care industry, managers of hospitality services are exploring potential efficiencies gained by merging departments in an attempt to leverage operational similarities with the goal of minimizing labor costs while maintaining or increasing customer satisfaction. Although the notion of optimizing operations by focusing on the service customer is central to general-system theorists, no extant studies assess whether such a practice applied to health care hospitality services enhances labor efficiency. Moreover, there is no apparent consensus in the industry whether such an approach is warranted or, if it is, what combinations are optimal. This exploratory study's findings, which included 105 acute-care hospitals in the United States, suggest that combining one hospitality service (such as foodservice) with another (such as housekeeping or maintenance) is more labor efficient but that no one combination is better than another.