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The purpose of this study is to examine the association of managerial incentives and political costs with hospital financial distress, recovery or closure. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has stated that hospital closures are important for evaluating the distribution of cost, quality and access to healthcare throughout the US. Using Logistic regression, we demonstrate that hospital closure is associated with low occupancy, return on investment, asset turnover, and lack of affiliation with a multihospital system. It is also significantly associated with urban location, teaching programs, high Medicare and Medicaid patient populations, and high debt. Essential access nonprofit hospitals are less likely to close, while this does not affect governmental and for-profit hospitals. Our research hypotheses are supported by these results.

This paper critically reviews the motivations for introducing different connected healthcare to support Assisted Living in older and other vulnerable groups. The aim is to develop a new approach that will be sustainable in the future.

The methodology involves a consideration of assessment criteria currently being employed and the resulting costs and limitations in providing a person centred approach. The implications of introducing new technologies such as plesiocare and mCare are then considered.

It was found that one of the most cost‐effective applications of technology is in the support of informal carers but the telecare equipment that they are offered may not be the most appropriate.

The findings are limited by a lack of formal risk assessments that are person centred. The implications include the need for improved training in assessment processes and access to a wider inventory of technologies.

Existing telecare services will need to change in order to adopt more plesiocare and self‐care approaches and to engage more actively in the development of models based on mcare.

Governments and health ministries may achieve better and lower cost support for their ageing population by adopting a model that includes multiple layers of technology, including easier access to self‐care and mCare technologies.

This paper includes the first discussion on plesiocare and its relative advantages over telecare in supporting informal carers.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the successful implementation of low cost connected healthcare technologies in developing countries.

The study has considered the current models of telehealthcare being employed in Western Countries, and how other models of remote access may be relevant to countries in Africa and in the Indian sub‐continent.

The work has demonstrated the significant potential of m‐healthcare services for delivering successful outcomes using basic handsets and text messaging.

The technology is changing rapidly, so the field should be reviewed on a regular basis.

This implies that more advanced mcare services using peripheral sensors, smart phones and bespoke “apps” may quickly result in healthcare services being offered to millions of patients who might otherwise have no access to primary care physicians.

Rural isolation and loss of access to healthcare should be consigned to history.

This case study is original in that it looks at the successful implementation of low cost connected healthcare technologies in developing countries.

This study examines whether nonprofit hospitals (NPHs) use price increases to overstate reported charity care spending. Anecdotal evidence points to hospitals raising prices to maximize Medicare's supplemental reimbursement and to maximize collection from self-pay and uninsured patients. This study provides empirical evidence that NPHs raise prices in part to satisfy the state's charity care requirements and to substitute real care with price-valued charity care. The ratio of charges to costs (RCC), price standardized by cost - a measure for comparing revenues generated to estimate costs allocations, is used to test the association between price increases and charity care reporting by NPHs. We hypothesize and find evidence that NPHs facing financial and political pressures in addition to charity care regulations are more likely to report a higher value of charity care.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how career identity informs employees’ willingness to engage in organizational change initiatives.

The paper draws on the findings of a qualitative case study exploring the experiences of 29 employees involved in a planned “bottom-up” organizational change initiative. At the time of the study, all interviewees were employed in a Dutch non-profit organization.

Drawing on protean career theory and the literature on other-oriented work values, we show that career identity informs both how employees make sense of the respective organizational change and their willingness to engage in it. The authors found that proactive career behavior and a focus on other-oriented work values inform higher levels of employees’ engagement in the change, while passive career behavior and self-centered work values inform employees’ lower levels of involvement in the change initiative. Based on the findings, the authors conclude this paper with a conceptual model which captures the cyclical relationship between career identity and employees’ willingness to engage in organizational change initiatives.

Future research should consider both the individual characteristics of employees involved in change initiatives and content or contextual factors when exploring willingness to engage with change.

Organizational change consultants and managers need to be aware of the influence of career identity on employees’ willingness to engage in organizational change and use this information during the implementation of change initiatives.

The paper explores employees’ willingness to engage with organizational change initiatives through the lens of career identity.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the use of wearable technologies that focuses on applications that tackle sensory and communication deficits, physical disabilities and alarm and activity monitoring. It is intended to promote the introduction of more wearable approaches to providing assistive technologies because of their benefits in utilisation and aesthetic appeal.

The approach involves a comparison of different types of portable device in order to identify different groups that may be beneficial to different application areas. Recent advances are then considered for each area.

The work demonstrates that the use of wearable AT device is increasing due to improvements in materials, battery power and connected intelligence such as smartphones. They will allow new devices to be introduced that are smaller, lighter and more usable.

Utilisation of assistive technologies is likely to improve as wearable devices become the norm across a wide range of applications

Approaches to improving the Quality of Life of people with disabilities through an extended use of assistive technologies will be enhanced by the increased range of devices available and by their performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first review of wearable devices that has focused on the needs of people who have rehabilitation and/or social care needs. Its value lies in encouraging manufacturers and designers to use wearable approaches to solving some of the problems facing vulnerable people.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an end-to-end process to improve the prescription, uptake and utilisation of assisted living technologies in order to improve outcomes for older and disabled people.

The approach involved consideration of the ways in which people’s support needs are considered and how a more relevant picture can be drawn using their own goals and the issues and obstacles that prevent them achieving improvement. New models of support were introduced in order to improve the suitability of prescriptions for people who lived under different circumstances, sometimes with family carers.

It was found that the application of an enhanced assessment approach required professionals and family members to understand more about the range of available technologies and their limitations. In order to avoid rejection of the technology, there will be a need for service providers to extend the range of applications that they offer, and to consider the suitability of the home environment for introducing new systems.

The new model of assessment and prescription will improve the options for independent living for many people with minor disabilities and age-related problems.

The correct use of assistive technologies will be improved leading to users having more confidence in the use of technologies to support independence in place of conventional and expensive care services.

The new model of assessment and prescription described in this paper is novel and developed by the authors as original work. Its value is that it disrupts current assessment schemes and will encourage innovation in prescription, and a more person-centred approach to satisfying the needs of vulnerable people.

In this paper we discuss the potential role capital markets will play in health care restructuring. According to theory, agency costs, asymmetric information and strategic interactions cause the cost of capital for nonprofit entities to slope upward. Freestanding nonprofits are particularly disadvantaged in this regard. We conclude that some organizational forms will be less viable due to problems of capital access. Empirical work examines the capital structure of nonprofit entities. Our results indicate that chain hospitals are able to access more debt, both taxable and tax-exempt, than freestanding hospitals. Capital markets also associate for profit market presence with capital risk. We conclude that freestanding hospitals are at a relative disadvantage is accessing capital markets.