Organizational Learning Capacity and Health Literacy in Acute Care Hospitals

Abstract

How healthcare organizations learn and use new knowledge is particularly important in acute care hospitals, where organizational knowledge directly impacts the health of users. Using the example of health literate best practices, this paper examines the factors that influence organizational learning capacity in acute care hospitals. The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research contains five general domains which help to define the literature review: the intervention, the inner setting, the outer setting, the individuals involved and the implementation process. Argote & Miron-Spektor’s framework for analyzing organizational learning is used to understand how new knowledge is used in organizations. As well, the concept of organizational absorptive capacity is considered as it fits within the domains of the CFIR and it is a key construct in the understanding of organizational learning. Together, these three areas of thought help to develop a new conceptual framework that is focused on the factors influencing the learning capacity and uptake of best practices in acute care hospitals. This framework helps us to understand how best practices can be adopted by healthcare organizations. As the uptake of health literate best practices has the potential to improve patient outcomes and decrease healthcare costs, the use of the framework has the potential to facilitate improved hospital performance as well as improve use of acute care health resources.