Technology decisions for a flexible health care organization

Abstract

Summary form only given. The fastest growing service sector, health care, is facing the same challenges as their manufacturing counterparts. In this case, however, there are more constraints since health care is partially regulated by the government and reimbursing organizations. These constraints and intensive competition forced health care organizations to revise their strategic objectives. Similarities of the new competitive challenges encouraged health care organizations to look at new technologies used in dealing with these challenges in the manufacturing sector. Health care organizations have a number of strategic choices in meeting their customer requirements. These choices can be summarized in a strategy continuum defined by two extreme strategies: broad range competition and specialist competition. In order to compete in an environment which is defined by new consumer driven focus in which new products and services must be developed quickly and marketed continuously with reasonable cost, health care organizations, just like their manufacturing counterparts have been doing it, must adopt flexible organization systems. This is a strategic move by both types of organizations. There are significant organizational requirements to be met in this transition. Role of technology, organization's strategic emphasis, their current resource-mix and capacity availability, market pressures, government regulations, and ever complex reimbursement mechanism will add additional constraints in this transformation. Flexible organizations for health care will be a requirement for survival.