Purpose – The optimum response to the different stages of a major burns incident is still not established. The fire in a café in Volendam on New Year's Eve 2000 was the worst incident in recent Dutch history and resulted in mass burn casualties. The fire has been the subject of several...

Purpose – To develop propositions on why public policies towards decreasing waiting list in health care can be expected to be unsuccessful. Design/methodology/approach – On the basis of a case study of public policies directed towards the reduction of the waiting lists in health care a...

Purpose – If public trust in health care is to be used as a performance indicator for health care systems, its measurement has to be sensitive to changes in the health care system. For this purpose, this study has monitored public trust in health care in The Netherlands over an eight‐year...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe an inventory of the strategic responses of institutional providers of mental handicapped care to the strengthening of consumer choice through a personal care budget (PCB) Design/methodology/approach – Semi structured interviews were...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to apply the image theory to the hospital context in order to add a perspective into the known complex relationship between physicians and hospital managers. This insight can enrich current intervention schemes used in health care to facilitate...

Purpose – This paper seeks to identify different medical strategies adopted in relation to the new hospital payment systems in Germany, The Netherlands and England and analyse how the medical strategies have impacted on the emergence of these New Public Management policy tools between 2002 and...

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the forces that influence the shifting of professional boundaries on the entry of a new medical occupation in Dutch hospitals – non‐specialist emergency physicians. Design/methodology/approach – Five case studies of Dutch hospitals were conducted...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the effect of the introduction of cross-functional team (CFT)-based organization, rather than, on planning and performance of OR teams. Design/methodology/approach – In total, two surgical departments of the Radboud University Nijmegen...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore sensemaking of incidents by health care professionals through an analysis of the role of professional identity in narratives of incidents. Using insights from social identity theory, the authors argue that incidents may create a threat of...