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The aim of this paper is to support public decision‐makers in a local healthcare agency (LHA) in evaluating the effects of different de‐hospitalization strategies and the potential for outsourcing clinical services.

The approach adopted is based on the “patient pathway” perspective. Starting from the identification of specific care pathways, all the feasible care paths in a given LHA in Italy are investigated in order to evaluate the practicability of the de‐hospitalization of some phases with a particular focus on co‐ordination of hospitals and territorial services. A heuristic approach based on discrete‐event simulation modelling is proposed. The methodology and the simulation model have been validated with reference to field data derived from a full‐scale case study carried out within a LHA in southern Italy.

The results show where, in terms of care pathways, de‐hospitalization is practicable, valuable in terms of better resource utilization, and eligible for outsourcing. The outsourcing option appears to be more sustainable from a social point of view. It specifies that there would be no dismissal of employees, and that there would be recruitment of specialized workers such as nurses and doctors, employed under more flexible conditions. Savings in overheads would be achieved by means of patient de‐hospitalization.

The existing scientific literature, to the best of the authors' knowledge, deals with patient flow management at the hospital level. However, in the European countries, the public healthcare system is generally organized in terms of the territorially based allocation of service centres. Given the scarcity of public resources, the main difficulty seems to be a mismatch among actions needed to improve territorial and residential care for outsourcing, and the interventions needed to contain hospital costs.

Integration between primary and secondary healthcare services and institutions has been at the core of health policy in Scandinavian countries over the last decade. This paper is based on an explorative case study of recent reforms in the healthcare sector and their outcomes in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. We discuss the possibilities of and problems for integrating the healthcare sector through the coordination mechanisms of hierarchy, market and network. The paper also discusses whether the institutional logic of the healthcare field is moving from a dual logic of ‘cure’ and ‘care’ towards a unifying logic of ‘integrated care’. We find that although the organisational principles that regulate the relationship between actors in the healthcare field in the three countries have changed, the challenge of achieving a mix of coordinative mechanisms that promote, rather than weaken, integration remains. However, the new organisational and regulative arrangements are an arena for increased interaction and collaboration between the actors, and thus a foundation for change towards the institutional logic of integrated health care.

A high and possibly increasing prevalence of mental disorders in prisoners has been demonstrated in recent surveys. Psychiatric care of prisoners is subject to wide regional variations in Germany, especially regarding inpatient treatment. Although hospitalized psychiatric patients in prison closely resemble those in forensic psychiatric secure hospitals with regard to socio‐demographic (percentage of women, age peak) and forensic characteristics (delinquency, prison experience), marked discrepancies in the diagnostic spectrum necessitate very different treatment planning based on general clinical psychiatry when considering the approach and especially the treatment duration. In Berlin, we try to develop a care structure within the prison system, which addresses inmate‐specific problems and circumstances as well as the possibility of inpatient and outpatient treatment and semihospitalization according to the principle of “equivalence”.

With the aim to enrich the ongoing debate about healthcare management, the paper has a twofold intent: [1] to emphasise the interpretative contribution that intellectual capital can provide to a better understanding of the relevant role of patients in the healthcare sector and [2] to investigate the relationships between the three main dimensions of intellectual capital – human capital, relational capital and structural capital – and patient satisfaction in the healthcare sector.

The intellectual capital framework is contextualised in the healthcare sector, and the relationships among patient evaluations of human capital, relational capital and structural capital and patient satisfaction are tested via structural equation modelling (SEM) using primary data collected with reference to a sample of 561 Italian patients involved in post survey treatments in three Italian hospitals.

The role of intellectual capital in supporting a better understanding of processes and dynamics of patient satisfaction in the healthcare sector is underlined. The empirical research provides possible guidelines for recovery patients centrality in healthcare management.

The paper shows how an intellectual capital framework can support a better understanding and management of dynamics and processes through which patient centrality and satisfaction in healthcare management can be enforced.

Seeks to review policy and practice in the English National Health Service (NHS) to show the extent to which medically framed notions of cure act in opposition to attempts to enforce a duty of partnership in the delivery of health and social care.

A review of national policy and the relevant academic literature, spanning two decades, was used to examine the development of inter‐organisational relations at the boundaries of health and social care in England.

The paper finds that, despite an espoused willingness on the part of national and local stakeholders to remove long‐established disciplinary and organisational partitions between sectors, the failure to secure a shift from medically to socially constructed notions of health continues to impede more integrated care. Furthermore, policies emphasising patient through‐put, speed of treatment, episodic intervention and the primacy of hospitals are shown to encourage and empower health professionals to withdraw from cross‐boundary working in line with the isolating tendencies of bio‐medically framed notions of cure.

The paper draws together evidence from policy, research and theoretical literature to identify the underlying causes of collaborative failure, highlighting the manner in which associated processes of public service reform can serve to reinforce long‐established institutional barriers to inter‐organisational working, both now and in the future.

This study aims to explore how the use of a performance measurement system (PMS) reflects the compatibility between institutional logics at different levels. It emphasises the centrality of institutional logics behind actors’ expectations.

Drawing on pragmatic constructivism, the study assumes that a PMS is used coherently when it realises the values and beliefs of the actors involved. This requires that actors communicate and understand one another (communication coherence) and accept the PMS in use (value coherence). The study argues that a coherent use of a PMS reflects the compatibility between the institutional logics at the same (field levels) or different levels (field and societal levels). The empirical evidence comes from a large public hospital located in the south of Italy.

The empirical results describe episodes that highlight how the coherence in the use of PMS reflects the compatibility of institutional logics at different levels and episodes where the compatibility can be hindered by problems in the coherent use of the PMS related to value and communication coherence. A lack of communication and value coherence is highlighted in the use of PMS as “compromising accounts”.

The study sheds light on how coherence in the use of PMS reflects the compatibility between the institutional logics involved at different levels, suggesting that a focus on one prevailing logic must be avoided. The study extends logics compatibility beyond the field level to the societal level.

With the changing times, the role of social media has increased manifold. It acts as one of the platforms for disseminating information to the public faster. Social media enables us to focus on widespread ways of reaching the target audience. The principal motto of this research study is to identify the role of social media in public health development with a systematic review of literature in terms of its practice, assistance and application in future areas of public health measures.

The research adopted a bibliometric analysis method to analyze the data from vast sources. The Scopus database was used to extract papers using appropriate keywords. Thus, the study tries to answer the following research questions: (1) to determine the key journals, authors and keywords in the public health development research; (2) to provide a theme-based cluster based on the keywords’ cooccurrences; and (3) to develop a research framework for the upcoming researchers.

The study's findings provide a path to understanding the present research stream regarding the highest publication in terms of journals and the year and relevance of social media in public health development. Five theme-based clusters have been identified based on keyword cooccurrences. Thus, future researchers can extend the research field using different themes and frameworks, adding value to the present research works.

This research work is helpful to the government, health practitioners, policymakers and researchers in investigating areas where social media can be implemented. Lastly, social media applications will provide health development measures and lucrative results to the public.

The research enumerates the significance of social media in public health development through bibliometric analysis. The research work analyzed, reviewed and measured the importance of social media in health development measures by recognizing its usage, application and potential future research directions. The theme-based clusters have also been identified from the keywords’ cooccurrences.

This paper aims to propose guidelines for public sector managers in assessing the impact of outsourcing on business continuity (BC) strategies. This paper evaluated how public managers from the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, perceive outsourcing, considering BC and how it relates to the outsourcing of services and activities.

Theoretical lenses of outsourcing and BC were used to derive the study hypotheses. A questionnaire was drawn up to collect information to test the hypotheses. To test the proposed hypotheses, binary logistic regression was used through an empirical analysis of a sample of 51 Brazilian public managers.

This study found that when the public sector suffers from negative impacts of financial restrictions, outsourced services are the first ones to receive the negative impacts. This has had an adverse impact on BC in the public sphere. On the other hand, the authors verified that the public sphere’s capacity for resilience and the existence of specific methodologies to support public managers in outsourcing decision-making can contribute to BC.

This study assists public organizations to take advantage of internal outsourced services in the best possible way, making better use of public resources, gaining social legitimacy and legitimacy also in the provision of public services. However, each public sector can present different risks of non-continuity, and this aspect could not be considered in this research as well.

This study is a pioneer in highlighting the relationships between outsourcing strategies and BC in public services in Brazil. Through the guidelines discussed in this study, public managers could develop a more effective response to the implications of post-outsourcing budget constraints. In addition, the findings of this paper add to an understanding of the importance of business strategies for public services continuity and seek to help reduce uncertainties and better inform the government decision-making process.