Wybór formy koordynacji (governance mode) dla gospodarowania danymi osobowymi pacjentów w podmiotach leczniczych

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to present the conditions regarding the choice of governance mode for processing and protection of patients’ personal data in healthcare centres from the perspective of transaction cost economics (TCE). Processing and protection of patients’ personal data is an important area of the economics of healthcare centres, due to the need to ensure high-quality standards and because of significant costs of contracting, coordinating, and maintaining adequate physical infrastructure. Healthcare centres adopt a variety of modes to implement this activity: market contracts, long-term contracts, and hierarchy (internalization) methods. The efficiency of these allocation choices is sometimes low, considering both the accomplished standards and incurred costs. In the paper, the problem of how to implement activities in the area of processing and protecting personal data is discussed in the light of TCE. Based on this theory, the paper discusses the particular governance modes and the motivation behind their choice. Further, the forms of governance and their determinants in healthcare centres are analyzed, and partial inconsistency of these solutions with the theoretical assumptions of TCE is revealed. The concluding section provides recommendations as to further methodology of research in this area together with practical implications.