Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the use of patient safety initiatives (PSIs) at the US hospitals. These PSIs include such approaches as open discussion of errors, education and training, and system redesign. In particular, the paper seeks to examine factors that influence the...

Purpose – Rapidly rising healthcare costs, partially due to preventable medical errors, have led hospitals to redouble their process improvement (PI) efforts. The purpose of this paper is to examine how PI initiatives mediate the effect of medical error sources to enhance three hospital...

Purpose – As hospital costs continue to rise, increasing attention is being paid to the way these organizations are and should be managed. This attention typically comes in the form of focus on costs of services, quality (often measured through mortality rates) and length of stay. Hospital...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically how operational performance and contextual factors contribute to differences in overall patient care costs across different hospitals. Design/methodology/approach – Administrative data are employed from a sample of hospitals in...

Rapidly rising healthcare costs, partially due to preventable medical errors, have led hospitals to redouble their process improvement (PI) efforts. The purpose of this paper is to examine how PI initiatives mediate the effect of medical error sources to enhance three hospital outcomes (patient...

In preparation for health care reform, many hospitals are contemplating redesigning their physical facilities and altering patient care policies. Uses a large Texas hospital as the subject of this study which was considering implementing policy changes in obstetric patient care along with...