Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore and conceptualize how healthcare professionals and managers give shape to the increasing call for compassionate care as an alternative for system-based quality management systems. The research demonstrates how quality rebels craft...

Purpose: Despite the continuation of hospital mergers in many western countries, it is uncertain if and how hospital mergers impact the quality of care. This poses challenges for the regulation of mergers. The purpose of this paper is to understand: how regulators and hospitals frame the impact...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the formation and composition of “regions” as places of care, both empirically and conceptually. Design/methodology/approach: This paper draws on action-oriented research involving experiments aimed at designing, implementing and evaluating...

The increasing focus on patient safety in the field of health policy is accompanied by research programs that articulate the role of the social sciences as one of contributing to enhancing safety in healthcare. Through these programs, new approaches to studying safety are facing a narrow...

Long term care needs improvement, but still little is known how quality improvement works in practice. A better, in-depth, understanding of the content and complexities of quality improvement is necessary because of the still limited theoretical and empirical grounds underlying its approach....