Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

This study is about an organizational change for traditional hospitals to better meet the challenges of the rapidly changing healthcare industry through a case study on care centers in the United States ＆ Korea. The purpose of this study is to find organizational design guidelines for Korean hospita...

This study is about an organizational change for traditional hospitals to better meet the challenges of the rapidly changing healthcare industry through a case study on care centers in the United States ＆ Korea. The purpose of this study is to find organizational design guidelines for Korean hospitals which are struggling to change from the traditionally department-based care organizations, which are obviously caregiver-oriented, to the new disease and organ-based care centers that are patent-focused. Organizational features and design guidelines of the disease and organ-based care centers were obtained from the analysis of the American prototypes for the disease and organ-based hospitals; the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the Mayo Clinic. Through analyzing their organizational features and their contingent factors, such as their educational functions, their history, their size, their financial status, their organizational culture, and their organizational technology, some hypothetical design guidelines were highlighted in order to find applicable design guidelines for the Korean hospitals. Since these design guidelines should be applied to Korean hospitals only after examining their compatibility with each hospital, this study further analyzed the current situation of four major Korean hospitals. Various positions of Korean hospitals on the continuum of organizational configurations result from their unique contingent factors, and these positions demonstrate that the Korean hospitals are in a time of transition. Their configurations include a functional center, a clinic-focused center, and a comprehensive center. The functional center is the closest to the traditional department-based care organization. The comprehensive center is a perfect patient-focused, disease and organ-based care organization. Although the comprehensive center is the ideal type of the disease and organ-based care center, it is difficult to change the traditional organization to the comprehensive center because there are huddles that block organizational change. Especially, the education and training function of hospitals is based on the traditional, department-based organization, so it is impossible for the hospitals with the education and training function to become comprehensive centers. Through examining the relationship between the contingent factors and the three types of disease and organ-based care centers, some effective redesign strategies for each Korean hospital were drawn. As an explorative study of disease and organ-based care centers in Korea, this study aims to present some optimal design guidelines for Korean hospitals in a transition under various contingent conditions.

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