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Bureaucracy to a large extent entrenches orderliness and productive means of achieving goals in both public and private organisations across the world. However, bureaucracy is not suitable in the management of hospitals due to its peculiar nature of operations. This study investigates the conundrum of bureaucratic processes and health-care service delivery in government hospitals in Nigeria.

The study surveyed 600 outpatients and attendees visiting tertiary and government hospitals in Nigeria using descriptive design to obtained data from the respondents. A research instrument, questionnaire, was used to gather data. Out of the 600 outpatients visiting the 20 hospitals in government and tertiary hospitals, 494 responses were returned from the attendees. The study employed random sampling strategy to collect the information.

The findings of this study were that service delivery in government hospitals were in adverse position on all the four constructs of bureaucratic dimensions as against quality of service delivery in hospitals in Nigeria. It discovered that bureaucratic impersonality cannot impact on the quality of service delivery in government hospitals in Nigeria. Separation and division of labour among health workers have no significant effect on quality service delivery in government hospitals. Formal rules and regulations (administrative procedure, rules, and policies) prevent quality service delivery in government hospitals in Nigeria. Also, patient’s waiting time was not significant to the quality of service delivery in government hospitals.

The results are constrained with dimensions of bureaucratic processes. Thus, the implication of this study is that bureaucracy in the Nigerian public hospitals is an unnecessary marriage which should be carefully separated and de-emphasised for quality service delivery in the hospitals to thrive.

Largely, this study is practical essential as it unearths the irrelevant operations procedure that hinder progress in Nigerian hospitals.

The study accomplishes recognised importance to survey how bureaucracy impedes quality service delivery in government hospitals. This study has provided a vital clue to elements that will bring rapid attention to patients’outcome in Nigerian hospitals and health-care facilities which hitherto has not been emphasised. The study has contributed to the existing body of knowledge associated to healthcare service quality in developing country.

This study examines entrepreneurship and assesses its relevance to health care organizations through a detailed description of the optimal environment, organizational factors, and managerial roles in the entrepreneurship process. The article finds entrepreneurship processes to be especially useful to health care organizations as they struggle to survive in the competitive managed care environment.

The WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office has emphasized health system strengthening among the top five strategic priorities. One of the integral elements of health systems are the hospitals. The purpose of this paper is to review the need for formalized training in hospital management to improve the quality of care.

Literature review and hands on experience of conducting a regional training in hospital management for Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) countries.

Majority of patients in EMR bypass Primary Health Care facilities due to inadequate quality of services and prefer seeking specialized care at a tertiary level. There is mounting evidence of mediocre to poor patient satisfaction due to inefficient health care practices in hospitals of EMR. Strengthening the management capacity of the hospitals through a formal training programme is therefore necessary for improving the performance of health care delivery and the overall health system. Hospital management encompasses hospital planning and operational activities including development and implementation of organizational strategies to ensure adequate numbers and quality of trained human resources and effective financial management, disaster management, health management information system utilization, support services, biomedical engineering, transport and waste management. Such training will prepare health care professionals with leadership skills to deliver quality hospital services.

This is one of the first papers emphasizing the need for a formal structured regional training in hospital management for the countries of EMR. A modular incremental training approach developing an EMR Credit Transfer and Accumulation system is proposed.

A large number of studies indicate that coercive forms of organizational control and performance management in health care services often backfire and initiate dysfunctional consequences. The purpose of this article is to discuss new approaches to performance management in health care services when the purpose is to support innovative changes in the delivery of services.

The article represents cross-boundary work as the theoretical and empirical material used to discuss and reconsider performance management comes from several relevant research disciplines, including systematic reviews of audit and feedback interventions in health care and extant theories of human motivation and organizational control.

An enabling approach to performance management in health care services can potentially contribute to innovative changes. Key design elements to operationalize such an approach are a formative and learning-oriented use of performance measures, an appeal to self- and social-approval mechanisms when providing feedback and support for local goals and action plans that fit specific conditions and challenges.

The article suggests how to operationalize an enabling approach to performance management in health care services. The framework is consistent with new governance and managerial approaches emerging in public sector organizations more generally, supporting a higher degree of professional autonomy and the use of nonfinancial incentives.

Formal structured leadership training is increasingly incorporated as a regular fixture in developed nations to produce competent leaders to ensure the provision of quality patient care. However, most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) rely on one-off external training opportunities for selected individuals as they lack the necessary resources to implement long-term training for a wider pool of potential health care leaders. This case study shares the establishment process of the Talent Grooming Programme for technical health care professionals (TGP), a three-year in-house leadership training programme specially targeted at potential health care leaders in Malaysia.

This case study aims to share a comprehensive overview of the ideation, conceptualisation and implementation of TGP. The authors also outlined its impact from the individual and organisational perspectives, besides highlighting the lessons learned and recommendations for the way forward.

TGP set out to deliver experiential learning focusing on formal training, workplace experiences, practical reflection and mentoring by supervisors and other esteemed leaders to fulfil the five competency domains of leadership, organisational governance, communication and relationship, professional values and personal values. The successes and challenges in TGP programme delivery, post-training assessment, outcome evaluation and programme sustainability were outlined.

The authors’ experience in setting up TGP provided valuable learning points for other leadership development programme providers. As for any development programme, a continuous evaluation is vital to ensure its relevance and sustainability.

Certain aspects of TGP establishment can be referenced and modified to adapt to country-specific settings for others to develop similar leadership programme, especially those in LMICs.

This study aims to deepen the understanding of the challenges and implications entailed by deploying mobile clinics in conflict zones to reach populations affected by violence and cut off from health-care services.

This research combines an integrated literature review and an instrumental case study. The literature review comprises two targeted reviews to provide insights: one on conflict zones and one on mobile clinics. The case study describes the process and challenges faced throughout a mobile clinic deployment during and after the Iraq War. The data was gathered using mixed methods over a two-year period (2017–2018).

Armed conflicts directly impact the populations’ health and access to health care. Mobile clinic deployments are often used and recommended to provide health-care access to vulnerable populations cut off from health-care services. However, there is a dearth of peer-reviewed literature documenting decision support tools for mobile clinic deployments.

This study highlights the gaps in the literature and provides direction for future research to support the development of valuable insights and decision support tools for practitioners.

To investigate the effects of payor–provider integration on the operational performance of health service provision. The research explores whether integration governs agency problems and tilts the incentives of diverse actors toward more systematic outcomes.

A two stage multimethod case study of occupational health services. A qualitative stage aimed to understand the reasons, mechanisms, and outcomes of payor–provider integration. A quantitative stage evaluated the performance of the integrated hospital against fee-for-service partner hospitals with a sample of 2,726 patients.

Payor–provider integration mitigates agency problems on multiple levels of the service system by complementing formal governance mechanisms with informal mechanisms. Compared to partner hospitals, the integrated hospital yielded 9% lower the total costs of occupational injuries achieved primarily by emphasizing conservative care and faster recovery.

Focuses on occupational health services in Finland. Provides initial evidence of the effects of payor–provider integration on the operational performance.

Vertical integration may provide systematic outcomes but requires mindful implementation of multiple mechanisms. Rigorous change management initiative is advised.

For patients, the research shows payor–provider integration of health services can be implemented in a manner that it reduces care costs while not compromising care quality and customer satisfaction.

This study provides a rare longitudinal analysis of payor–provider integration in health-care operations management. The study adds to the knowledge of operational performance improvement of health services.

This paper aims to describe the evolution of Sanokondu, highlighting the rationale, achievements and lessons learnt from this initiative. Sanokondu is a multinational community of practice dedicated to fostering health-care leadership education worldwide. This platform for health-care leadership education was conceived in 2014 at the first Toronto International Summit on Leadership Education for Physicians (TISLEP) and evolved into a formal network of collaborators in 2016.

This paper is a case study of a multinational collaboration of health-care leaders, educators, learners and other stakeholders. It describes Sanokondu’s development and contribution to global health-care leadership education. One of the major strategies has been establishing partnerships with other educational organizations involved in clinical leadership and health systems improvement.

A major flagship of Sanokondu has been its annual TISLEP meetings, which brings various health-care leaders, educators, learners and patients together. The meetings provide opportunities for dialog and knowledge exchange on leadership education. The work of Sanokondu has resulted in an open access knowledge bank for health-care leadership education, which in addition to the individual expertise of its members, is readily available for consultation. Sanokondu continues to contribute to scholarship in health-care leadership through ongoing research, education and dissemination in the scholarly literature.

Sanokondu embodies the achievements of a multinational collaboration of health-care stakeholders invested in leadership education. The interactions culminating from this platform have resulted in new insights, innovative ideas and best practices on health-care leadership education.