Journal of Healthcare Management - May/June 2014 - (Page 220)

J o u r n al of H ealt H care M anage Ment 59:3 M ay /J une 2014 major employer's adoption. Starting January 1, 2013, Wal-Mart's employees gained access to procedures in six centers of excellence across the United States. It joined an increasing number of U.S. corporations, such as Boeing, PepsiCo, and Lowe's, that allow their employees to undergo some procedures away from home, with no copays or deductibles (Stagg Elliott, 2012). This system, known as intrabound MT, provides an alternative to individuals and organizations wary of obtaining healthcare abroad. Ultimately, it may persuade employers to seek more information about the viability of outbound MT for their employees and disseminate it through organizational communication channels. MT options are still a novelty in EBC, but several factors in this study signal its continued growth. Obvious, external organizational characteristics- age, size, location, and insurance funding-did not differentiate between adopters and nonadopters of MT options. The commercial market for MT is thus not an easily identifiable niche, but rather a broad entity. The distinguishing characteristics were more subtle; they involved organizational culture and internal qualities: global mind-set and partnerships, openness to change and the flexibility it engenders, and the HR function's power. The trends toward greater globalization, exposure to new concepts, and coverage expansion are unlikely to reverse course. These conditions suggest, at the very least, a broadened consideration of alternative healthcare options in the near future. Overall, the acceptable quality combined with cost savings produce a high-value healthcare experience that cannot be ignored by U.S. healthcare managers. The implications are straightforward: They must achieve superior value through superior operations management, and they must forgo trade-offs between effectiveness and efficiency in order to be competitive with MT options. Traditionally, the rifts between clinicians and administrators have stemmed from these perceived trade-offs. Clinicians historically have believed that administrators only care about efficiency at the expense of effectiveness, and vice versa for administrators. Thus, whether they are trained in Lean and Six Sigma methodologies or react to the pressure of the ACA's threats of penalties for poor quality and/or high costs, administrators now often try to communicate their simultaneous pursuit of effective and efficient operations. What may get lost in their message and approach, however, is that effectiveness must precede efficiency. In manufacturing, ample evidence suggests that world-class organizations reached their competitive status by establishing quality as the necessary foundation for other capabilities to develop (e.g., Nakane, 1986), not the other way around. Indeed, cost reduction programs may strip an organization of the quality resources necessary to run effective operations and drive overall costs down. The sample used in the study came from an online research panel. The representativeness of panels has sometimes been questioned. However, the nature of our research required that we target HR professionals with 220

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Journal of Healthcare Management - May/June 2014

Journal of Healthcare Management - May/June 2014
Contents
Interview With Christopher D. Van Gorder, FACHE, President and CEO of Scripps Health
Successful Strategic Planning for a Reformed Delivery System
You, Inc.
Assessing the Feasibility of a Virtual Tumor Board Program: A Case Study
Physician Clinical Alignment and Integration: A Community–Academic Hospital Approach
Employer-Based Coverage and Medical Travel Options: Lessons for Healthcare Managers
Composite Model for Profiling Physicians Across Domains of Care

Journal of Healthcare Management - May/June 2014