Health Services Management: A Case Study Approach, Eleventh Edition

Today’s healthcare managers face increasingly complex challenges and often must make decisions quickly. When a difficult situation arises, managers can no longer simply “look it up” online or in the management literature. Properly “looking it up” involves knowing where and how to look, appropriately framing a research question, weighing valid evidence, and understanding what is required to make proposed solutions work.

Health Services Management: A Case Study Approach offers a diverse collection of case studies to help readers learn and apply key concepts of management, with an emphasis on the use of evidence in management practice. The case study authors, many of whom are practitioners or academics who work closely with practitioners, present realistic management challenges across a variety of settings. They examine potential responses to those challenges by health services managers and other stakeholders, and they provide a platform for meaningful discussion of opportunities and constraints for management decision makers attempting to implement change.

This edition includes 60 case studies—32 of which are brand new—arranged thematically into six sections: The Role of the Manager, Control, Organizational Design, Professional Integration, Adaptation, and Accountability. The new cases include the following:

• Better Metrics for Financial Management
• What Makes a Patient-Centered Medical Home?
• Doing the Right Thing When the Financials Do Not Support Palliative Care
• Hearing the Patient Voice: Working with Patient and Family Advisers to Improve the Patient Experience
• Managed Care Cautionary Tale: A Case Study in Risk Adjustment and Patient Dumping

Learning by example is one of the oldest forms of learning, and the case study approach offers a time-tested way for students and healthcare professionals to develop practical skills that are not easily acquired through lectures. Health Services Management has been used in classrooms since 1978, and this eleventh edition offers a fresh take on a classic text.