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We hope this research volume will change the way scholars and managers think about health care management in two fundamental ways. First, we want to challenge the superficial separations between national and international health care management. To dissolve these distinctions, the “not-invented-here” or “who cares about a Belgian, Indian, or Thai medical center,” or “that won’t work in our policy system” attitudes must change. Second, we want scholars and managers to learn how to transfer innovative ideas and management practices across cultures and around policy barriers. Cultural, language, and policy differences present formidable barriers, but we believe lessons about managing human resources, informatics, quality, services, and strategies in health care organizations can be transferred.

The research analyzes good practices in health care “management experimentation models,” which fall within the broader range of the integrative public–private partnerships (PPPs). Introduced by the Italian National Healthcare System in 1991, the “management experimentation models” are based on a public governance system mixed with a private management approach, a patient-centric orientation, a shared financial risk, and payment mechanisms correlated with clinical outcomes, quality, and cost-savings. This model makes public hospitals more competitive and efficient without affecting the principles of universal coverage, solidarity, and equity of access, but requires higher financial responsibility for managers and more flexibility in operations.

In Italy the experience of such experimental models is limited but successful. The study adopts the case study methodology and refers to the international collaboration started in 1997 between two Italian hospitals and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC – Pennsylvania, USA) in the field of organ transplants and biomedical advanced therapies.

The research allows identifying what constitutes good management practices and factors associated with higher clinical performance. Thus, it allows to understand whether and how the management experimentation model can be implemented on a broader basis, both nationwide and internationally. However, the implementation of integrative PPPs requires strategic, cultural, and managerial changes in the way in which a hospital operates; these transformations are not always sustainable.

The recognition of ISMETT’s good management practices is useful for competitive benchmarking among hospitals specialized in organ transplants and for its insights on the strategies concerning the governance reorganization in the hospital setting. Findings can be used in the future for analyzing the cross-country differences in productivity among well-managed public hospitals.

This study aims to provide a picture of the current state of art in the use of big data for decision-making processes for the management of health-care organizations.

A systematic literature review was carried out. The research uses two analyses: descriptive analysis, describing the evolution of citations; keywords; and the ten most influential papers, and bibliometric analysis, for content evaluation, for which a cluster analysis was performed.

A total of 48 articles were selected for bibliographic coupling out of an initial sample of more than 5,000 papers. Of the 48 articles, 29 are linked on the basis of their bibliography. Clustering the 29 articles on the basis of actual content, four research areas emerged: quality of care, quality of service, crisis management and data management.

Health-care organizations believe strongly that big data can become the most effective tool for correctly influencing the decision-making processes. Thus, more and more organizations continue to invest in big data analytics, and the literature on this topic has expanded rapidly. This study seeks to provide a comprehensive picture of the different streams of literature existing, together with gaps in research and future perspectives. The literature is mature enough for an analysis to be made and provide managers with useful insights on opportunities, criticisms and perspectives on the use of big data for health-care organizations. However, to date, there is no comprehensive literature review on the big data analysis in health care. Furthermore, as big data is a “sexy catchphrase,” more clarity on its usage may be needed. It represents an important tool to be investigated and its great potential is often yet to be discovered. This study thus sheds light on emerging issues and suggests further research that may be needed.

Amid increasing interest in how government regulation and market competition affect the cost and financial sustainability in health care sector, it remains unclear whether health care providers behave similarly to their counterparts in other industries. The goal of this chapter is to study the degree to which health care providers manipulate accruals in periods of financial difficulties caused, in part, by the rising costs of labor.

We collected the financial information of health care providers in 43 countries from 1984 to 2013 and conducted a pooled cross-sectional study with country and year fixed-effects.

The empirical evidence shows that health care providers with higher wage costs are more likely to smooth their earnings in order to maintain financial sustainability.

The finding of this study not only informs regulators that earnings management is pervasive in health care organizations around the world, but also contributes to the studies of financial book-tax reporting alignment, given the existing empirical evidence linking earnings management to corporate tax avoidance in this very sector.

This empirical study aims to identify the essential strategic leadership and management factors underlying sustainability in healthcare. It also examines which factors drive sustainability performance outcomes (SPO) in health-care organizations, an analysis lacking to date. It provides a strategic leadership and management perspective toward sustainable healthcare, responding to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The investigation adopted Sustainable Leadership as its research framework. Using a cross-sectional survey, 543 employees working in health-care and pharmaceutical companies in Thailand voluntarily provided responses. Factor analyses and structural equation modeling were employed.

The results revealed an emergent research model and identified 20 unidimensional strategic leadership and management factors toward sustainability in healthcare. The findings indicate significant positive effects on SPO in health-care organizations. Significant factors include human resource management/development, ethics, quality, environment and social responsibility, and stakeholder considerations.

The study was conducted in one country. Future studies should examine these relationships in diverse contexts. In practice, health-care firms should foster significant strategic leadership and management practices to improve performance outcomes for sustainability in healthcare.

This paper is the first empirical, multidisciplinary study with a focus on strategic leadership, health-care management and organizational sustainability. It identifies a proxy for measuring the effects of essential strategic leadership and managerial factors for sustainability in pharmaceutical health-care companies. It advances our currently limited knowledge and provides managerial implications for improving performance outcomes toward sustainable healthcare.

Frequent fire incidences in various hospitals across the globe with devastating effects on humans and other resources have multiplied. Stakeholders in the health-care sector are worried because of the yearly fire outbreak increase. However, fire safety management has been proved as a successful platform to mitigate fire in health-care facilities. How far regarding public health-care facilities is yet to receive in-depth studies in Malaysia. This paper aims to investigate the issues associated with fire safety management and proffers possible solutions to improve safety in public health-care facilities from the operators’ perception.

The objectives were achieved through a combination of case studies of five selected Malaysia’s public hospitals and a qualitative approach. Thematic analysis with the assistance of MAXQDA (software program designed for computer-assisted qualitative and mixed methods data) 2018, a type of qualitative data analysis software was used to analyse the collated data which emerged from the knowledgeable participants.

Lax implementation of safety policy, inadequate water pressure, poor maintenance, inadequate communication system, amongst others, emerged as the issues. Findings proffer five main measures to possibly improve fire safety management in public health-care buildings. This includes a feasible institutional framework, improve the emergency response team, improve the occupational health and safety system and others.

This paper is limited to exploring the issues associated with fire safety management and proffer possible solutions to improve safety in public health-care facilities from the operators’ perception. Future research is needed to engage useful information in advancing fire safety management in public hospital buildings and possibly developing a qualitative model using a generic fire response model. Also, to investigate the level of compliance with the requirements of a fire safety management plan and possibly develop a well-detailed fire safety plan in Malaysia’s public health-care buildings.

As part of the paper implications, the paper concludes that improved fire protection systems via modern technologies and training of key staff members in accident response and recovery during fire emergencies should be encouraged. This can be achieved through the enforcement and implementation of a fire safety management plan. Thus, this study is encouraging the implementation and sustainability of a fire safety management plan for health-care buildings across Malaysia.

To the best of this paper’s knowledge, this is possibly the first comprehensive paper on fire safety management in public health-care facilities that engaged operators in Malaysia. Moreover, this paper proffers feasible policy solutions to improve the fire safety management plan in public health-care buildings.

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it suggests that knowledge management (KM), as an academic discipline and managerial practice, provides valuable perspectives and tools to help health and social care management cope with both existing and future challenges. Second, it reviews the existing evidence on the effects of KM on the management of health and social care. Based on the results of the review, an evaluation framework for the effects of KM is proposed.

The literature review was conducted using the guidance of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement to search the Web of Science and SCOPUS databases. The search terms included “knowledge management”, “healthcare” and “effect.” Academic articles published between 2010 and 2020 were included.

The study identifies six main categories among the effects of KM on the management of health and social care as follows: enhanced understanding of customer needs, improved organizational performance, better targeted decision-making, improved quality of service, behavioral or cultural change and improved risk management.

This study contributes by summarizing the literature on the effects of KM on the management of health and social care and proposing avenues for future research in this area.

This paper aims to gain insights about information management practices in public health-care organizations in Kuwait and offer recommendations to improve these practices.

This study involves secondary analysis of quantitative and qualitative accreditation-related data pertaining to the compliance with the Information Management standard at seven public tertiary health-care facilities over two accreditation cycles.

Overall, organizations improved their compliance with the Information Management standard. However, issues exist with effectively and efficiently transmitting data, aggregating clinical and administrative data and using the information for both strategic planning and quality improvement initiatives.

The analysed data set does not provide information about the improvements done between the accreditation cycles. Caution should be applied before assuming generalizability of the results, considering the context and social constructs around the health-care system is essential.

Compliance with predetermined criteria through accreditation can improve information management practices. Without proper management of information at health-care facilities, achieving safe and effective patient care is futile. The role of health information technology (IT) should not be sidelined; robust health IT solutions can help support good information management practices thereby improving care quality and aiding health-care reform.

Concerning information management, health-care organizations providing focused services have clear advantages over organizations providing general care services. Considering the type of care organization (general vs specialized) can provide insights into how information management practices can affect the operations of the organization.

This paper seeks to concentrate on the question whether any parallels can be found between the industrial sector and health care services with respect to the developments that have taken place in the area of Supply Chain Management. Starting from an analysis of existing literature, it is intended that different modes of Supply Chain integration will be discussed. Also, in doing so, it is intended that the lessons learned from the studies presented in this special issue will be summarized and placed into the perspective of future research that can be considered as necessary.

This paper adopted an exploratory, qualitative approach based on an analysis of existing literature in the area of Supply Chain Management in Health Services. Additionally, material from the case studies presented in this special issue is used to assess the current body of knowledge regarding Supply Chain Management in Health Services.

Starting from a classification of existing research, five main research areas with respect to Supply Chain Management in a health care setting are defined. Additionally, it is concluded that next to studies with a mono‐disciplinary focus, an interdisciplinary focus on Supply Chain Management issues in health services seems to be necessary.

This paper contributes to both the supply chain management literature and literature in the area of healthcare management by identifying some important research areas which are linked to both fields. This paper helps both academics and managers to gain a better understanding of the complexity of supply chain management in health services.