Over the past years hospitals, and healthcare organizations in general, have started to alter their structures and are moving from a relatively functional and hierarchical structure to structures that are more focused on client processes, cross-functional teams, and flattened across the organization (Vos, van Oostenbrugge, Lim, van Merode, & Groothuis, 2009). This leads to an increasing process-oriented organization of care within the sector and hospitals are looking to increase their Process Orientation (PO) as it could be the case that PO is the solution to a range of organizational problems that are arising in the healthcare industry. The basic idea is that the transition towards PO will lead to more patient-centered care, cost reductions and quality improvements (Vera & Kuntz, 2007).
McCormack (Business process orientation: gaining the e-business competitive advantage, 2001) defines a process-oriented organization as “an organization that, in all it’s thinking emphasizes process, as opposed to hierarchies, with special emphasis in outcomes and customer satisfaction.” A horizontal, process-oriented, organization focuses on activities as a whole that …show more content…
Although the tools that have been developed thus far have provided valuable input and have improved the understanding of PO in hospitals they have the limitation of subjectively measuring PO by measuring the staffs perception of PO in their organization, a perception that can easily be influenced by events in a hospital that do not relate to the state of acts of PO. Therefor, the need for developing a tool that will allow for an objective measurement of PO in hospitals is deemed
McCormack (Business process orientation: gaining the e-business competitive advantage, 2001) defines a process-oriented organization as “an organization that, in all it’s thinking emphasizes process, as opposed to hierarchies, with special emphasis in outcomes and customer satisfaction.” A horizontal, process-oriented, organization focuses on activities as a whole that …show more content…
Although the tools that have been developed thus far have provided valuable input and have improved the understanding of PO in hospitals they have the limitation of subjectively measuring PO by measuring the staffs perception of PO in their organization, a perception that can easily be influenced by events in a hospital that do not relate to the state of acts of PO. Therefor, the need for developing a tool that will allow for an objective measurement of PO in hospitals is deemed