The impact of service design and process management on clinical quality: An exploration of synergetic effects

Abstract

While service design and process management have received research attention in the past, there is limited empirical work examining both factors in the hospital setting. Through operationalizing focus as a service design approach and quality improvement (QI) initiatives as process management efforts, we hypothesize that focus and QI initiatives affect clinical quality both individually and collectively. Utilizing heart attack procedures as the study context, we examine a set of hypotheses based on a panel dataset consisted of 201 hospitals from 2005 to 2011 in the state of Florida. After accounting for potential lag effects and endogeneity biases, we find empirical support to the proposed hypotheses.