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BACKGROUND: Toxic work culture contributes to healthcare worker burnout and attrition, but little is known about how healthcare organizations can systematically create and promote a culture of civility and collegiality. OBJECTIVE: To analyze peer-to-peer positive feedback collected as part of a systematized mortality review survey to identify themes and recognition dynamics that can inform positive organizational culture change. DESIGN: Convergent mixed-methods study design. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 388 physicians, 212 registered nurses, 64 advanced practice providers, and 1 respiratory therapist at four non-profit hospitals (2 academic and 2 community). INTERVENTION: Providing optional positive feedback in the mortality review survey. MAIN MEASURES: Key themes and subthemes that emerged from positive feedback data, associations between key themes and positive feedback respondent characteristics, and recognition dynamics between positive feedback respondents and recipients. KEY RESULTS: Approximately 20% of healthcare workers provided positive feedback. Three key themes emerged among responses with free text comments: (1) providing extraordinary patient and family-centered care; (2) demonstrating self-possession and mastery; and (3) exhibiting empathic peer support and effective team collaboration. Compared to other specialties, most positive feedback from medicine (70.2%), neurology (65.2%), hospice and palliative medicine (64.3%), and surgery (58.8%) focused on providing extraordinary patient and family-centered care (p = 0.02), whereas emergency medicine (59.1%) comments predominantly focused on demonstrating self-possession and mastery (p = 0.06). Registered nurses (40.2%) provided multidirectional positive feedback more often than other clinician types in the hospital hierarchy (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Analysis of positive feedback from a mortality review survey provided meaningful insights into a health system's culture of teamwork and values related to civility and collegiality when providing end-of-life care. Systematic collection and sharing of positive feedback is feasible and has the potential to promote positive culture change and improve healthcare worker well-being.
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Cuidados Paliativos na Terminalidade da Vida , Assistência Terminal , Humanos , Retroalimentação , Hospitais , Mortalidade HospitalarRESUMO
To spur improvement in health-care service quality and quantity, performance-based financing (PBF) is an increasingly common policy tool, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This study examines how personnel diversity and affective bonds in primary care clinics affect their ability to improve care quality in PBF arrangements. Leveraging data from a large-scale matched PBF intervention in Tajikistan including 208 primary care clinics, we examined how measures of personnel diversity (position and tenure variety) and affective bonds (mutual support and group pride) were associated with changes in the level and variability of clinical knowledge (diagnostic accuracy of 878 clinical vignettes) and care processes (completion of checklist items in 2485 instances of direct observations). We interacted the explanatory variables with exposure to PBF in cluster-robust, linear regressions to assess how these explanatory variables moderated the PBF treatment's association with clinical knowledge and care process improvements. Providers and facilities with higher group pride exhibited higher care process improvement (greater checklist item completion and lower variability of items completed). Personnel diversity and mutual support showed little significant associations with the outcomes. Organizational features of clinics exposed to PBF may help explain variation in outcomes and warrant further research and intervention in practice to identify and test opportunities to leverage them. Group pride may strengthen clinics' ability to improve care quality in PBF arrangements. Improving health-care facilities' pride may be an affordable and effective way to enhance health-care organization adaptation.
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Atenção Primária à Saúde , Humanos , Atenção Primária à Saúde/economia , Qualidade da Assistência à Saúde , Reembolso de Incentivo , Pessoal de Saúde/psicologia , Melhoria de Qualidade , Feminino , MasculinoRESUMO
BACKGROUND: There is increasing recognition that beyond frontline workers' ability to speak up, their feeling heard is also vital, both for improving work processes and reducing burnout. However, little is known about the conditions under which frontline workers feel heard. PURPOSE: This inductive qualitative study identifies barriers and facilitators to feeling heard among nurses in hospitals. METHODOLOGY: We conducted in-depth semistructured interviews with registered nurses, nurse managers, and nurse practitioners across four hospitals ( N = 24) in a U.S. health system between July 2021 and March 2022. We coded with the aim of developing new theory, generating initial codes by studying fragments of data (lines and segments), examining and refining codes across transcripts, and finally engaging in focused coding across all data collected. FINDINGS: Frontline nurses who spoke up confronted two types of challenges that prevented feeling heard: (a) walls, which describe organizational barriers that lead ideas to be rejected outright (e.g., empty solicitation), and (b) voids, which describe organizational gaps that lead ideas to be lost in the system (e.g., structural mazes). We identified categories of responsive practices that promoted feeling heard over walls (boundary framing, unscripting, priority enhancing) and voids (procedural transparency, identifying a navigator). These practices appeared more effective when conducted collectively over time. CONCLUSION: Both walls and voids can prevent frontline workers from feeling heard, and these barriers may call for distinct managerial practices to address them. Future efforts to measure responsive practices and explore them in broader samples are needed. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Encouraging responsive practices may help ensure that frontline health care workers feel heard.
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Atitude do Pessoal de Saúde , Pessoal de Saúde , Humanos , Pesquisa QualitativaRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Collaboration between clinical and community-based social service organizations is increasingly seen as vital for preventing and managing chronic diseases but has been challenging to establish and sustain. PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to identify organizational barriers and facilitators for clinic-community collaboration. METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: We employed multiple methods to study a national sample of nonprofit community-based organizations that each collaborated with local clinical organizations for diabetes prevention in the United States. We used qualitative data collected longitudinally through 65 semistructured interviews from 2016 to 2017 at seven of these organizations and their clinical collaborators to understand their relationships. We employed survey data ( N = 247 with 73% response rate) to measure and explore relationships among qualitatively identified themes and collaboration performance. RESULTS: We documented three levels of organizational challenges to community-clinic collaboration. Interorganizational challenges pertain to facing only weakly aligned interests across organizations. Interpersonal challenges pertain to misperceptions and miscommunications that occur as frontline employees from differing organizations seek to work together. Task-related challenges pertain to the inadequacy of current processes to effectively link services across clinical and community settings. We found that bridging leadership , provisional teamwork, and learning processes helped to overcome these challenges by enabling iterative progress. Follow-up national survey results indicated that these facilitators were significantly associated with collaboration performance. CONCLUSIONS: Because community-clinic collaboration presents substantial interorganizational, interpersonal, and task-related challenges, financial incentives alone are likely insufficient for success. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Resources that help develop capacity to work across community and clinical settings may be vital and warrant dedicated funding.
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Organizações sem Fins Lucrativos , Seguridade Social , Humanos , Estados Unidos , Comunicação , Liderança , AprendizagemRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Substantial variation exists in how well health care is integrated, even across similarly structured organizations, yet research about what physician organizations (POs) do that enables or inhibits integrated care is limited. PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to explore the dynamics that enable POs to integrate care. METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: We ranked a stratified sample of POs according to patient perceptions of integrated care, as measured in a survey. We interviewed professionals, patients, and family members in 10 higher and 3 lower ranked POs about the process of caring for patients with complex conditions. We derived integration-related themes from the interview data and quantified their prevalence. Using a quasi-statistical approach, we explored relationships among themes and their associations with patient perceptions of integrated care. RESULTS: From 6,104 coded references, we derived a set of themes representing integration perspectives, integration engagement mechanisms, and integration failures. POs experienced frequent integration failures. Higher ranked POs experienced these failures less often because of a combination of functional, interpersonal, and stakeholder engagement mechanisms, which appear to complement one another. Integration perspectives, including both people-oriented and systems-oriented mindsets, appear to play a role in generating these integration dynamics. CONCLUSION: Delivering integrated care depends on a PO's ability to limit integration failures, keeping provider attention focused on patients. Building on the attention-based view, we present a framework suggesting that this ability is a function of both integration perspectives and integration engagement mechanisms. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: POs interested in delivering more integrated care should employ a variety of complementary integration engagement mechanisms and facilitate these efforts by nurturing both people-oriented and system-oriented mindsets among PO decision-makers.
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Prestação Integrada de Cuidados de Saúde , Médicos , HumanosRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Communication is an essential organizational process for responding to adversity. Managers are often advised to communicate frequently and redundantly during crises. Nonetheless, systematic investigation of how information receivers perceive organizational communication amid crises has remained lacking. PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to characterize features of effective internal crisis communication by examining how information-sharing processes unfolded during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODOLOGY: Between June and August 2020, we conducted 55 semistructured interviews with emergency department workers practicing in a variety of roles. We analyzed interview transcripts following constructivist constant comparative methods. RESULTS: Our findings revealed that at the onset of COVID-19 pandemic response, emergency department workers struggled with immense fear and anxiety amid high uncertainty and equivocality. Frequent and redundant communication, however, resulted in information delivery and uptake problems, worsening anxiety, and interpersonal tension. These problems were ameliorated by the emergence of contextual experts who centralized and democratized communication. Centralization standardized information received across roles, work schedules, and settings while decoupling internal communication from turbulence in the environment. Democratization made information accessible in a way that all could understand. It also ensured information senders' receptiveness to feedback from information receivers. Centralization and democratization together worked to reduce sensed uncertainty and equivocality, which reduced anxiety and interpersonal tension. CONCLUSION: Establishing frequent and redundant communication strategies does not necessarily address the anxiety and interpersonal tension produced by uncertainty and equivocality in crises. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Centralization and democratization of crisis communication can reduce anxiety, improve coordination, and promote a safer workplace and patient care environment.
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COVID-19 , Pandemias , Humanos , Comunicação , Atenção à Saúde , Disseminação de InformaçãoRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Care coordination is central to accountable care organizations (ACOs), especially in Medicaid where many patients have complex medical and social needs. Little is known about how to best organize care coordination resources in this context, particularly whether to centralize them. We examined how care coordinators' location, management, and colocation of both (within ACO headquarters, practice sites, or other organizations) relate to care quality and coordination. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of surveys administered to a sample of practice sites covering all 17 Medicaid ACOs in Massachusetts ( n = 225, response rate = 64%). We applied controlled, cluster-robust regressions, adjusting the significance threshold for the number of ACO clusters, to assess how clinical information sharing across settings, care quality improvement, knowledge of social service referral, and cross-resource coordination (i.e., the ability of multiple resources to work well together) relate to where care coordinators were physically located and/or managed. RESULTS: Centralizing care coordinators at ACO headquarters was associated with greater information sharing. Embedding care coordinators in practices was associated with greater care quality improvement. Embedding coordinators at other organizations was associated with less information sharing and care quality improvement. Managing coordinators at practice sites and other organizations were associated with better care quality improvement and cross-resource coordination, respectively. Colocating the two functions showed no significant differences. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Choosing care coordinators' locations may present trade-offs. ACOs may strategically choose embedding care coordinators at practice sites for enhanced care quality versus centralizing them at the ACO to facilitate information sharing.
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Organizações de Assistência Responsáveis , Estados Unidos , Humanos , Estudos Transversais , Medicaid , Melhoria de Qualidade , Qualidade da Assistência à SaúdeRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Psychological safety-the belief that it is safe to speak up-is vital amid uncertainty, but its relationship to feeling heard is not well understood. PURPOSE: The aims of this study were (a) to measure feeling heard and (b) to assess how psychological safety and feeling heard relate to one another as well as to burnout, worsening burnout, and adaptation during uncertainty. METHODOLOGY: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of emergency department staff and clinicians (response rate = 52%; analytic N = 241) in July 2020. The survey measured psychological safety, feeling heard, overall burnout, worsening burnout, and perceived process adaptation during the COVID-19 crisis. We assessed descriptive statistics and construct measurement properties, and we assessed relationships among the variables using generalized structural equation modeling. RESULTS: Psychological safety and feeling heard demonstrated acceptable measurement properties and were correlated at r = .54. Levels of feeling heard were lower on average than psychological safety. Psychological safety and feeling heard were both statistically significantly associated with lower burnout and greater process adaptation. Only psychological safety exhibited a statistically significant relationship with less worsening burnout during crisis. We found evidence that feeling heard mediates psychological safety's relationship to burnout and process adaptation. CONCLUSION: Psychological safety is important but not sufficient for feeling heard. Feeling heard may help mitigate burnout and enable adaptation during uncertainty. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: For health care leaders, expanding beyond psychological safety to also establish a feeling of being heard may further reduce burnout and improve care processes.
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Esgotamento Profissional , COVID-19 , Esgotamento Profissional/psicologia , Estudos Transversais , Humanos , Inquéritos e Questionários , IncertezaRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Integrated care that is continuous, coordinated and patient-centered is vital for Medicare beneficiaries, but its relationship to health care expenditures remains unclear. RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: This study explores-for the first time-the relationship between integrated care, as measured from the patient's perspective, and health care expenditures. METHODS: Subjects include a sample of continuously eligible fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries (n=8807) in 2015. Analyses draw on 7 previously validated measures of patient-perceived integrated care from the 2015 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey. These data are combined with 2015 administrative utilization data that measure health care expenditures. Relationships between patient-perceived integrated care and costs are assessed using generalized linear models with comprehensive control measures. RESULTS: Patients who perceive more integrated care have higher expenditures for many, but not all, cost categories examined. Aspects of integrated care pertaining to primary provider and specialist care are associated with higher costs in several areas (particularly inpatient costs associated with specialist knowledge of the patient). Office staff members' knowledge of the patient's medical history is associated with lower home health costs. CONCLUSIONS: Patients who experience their care as more integrated may have higher expenditures on average. Thoughtful policy choices, further research, and innovations that enable patients to perceive integrated care at lower or neutral cost are needed.
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Prestação Integrada de Cuidados de Saúde , Gastos em Saúde , Medicare/economia , Qualidade da Assistência à Saúde , Idoso , Idoso de 80 Anos ou mais , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Estudos de Amostragem , Estados UnidosRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Newly intensified use of personal protective equipment (PPE) in emergency departments presents teamwork challenges affecting the quality and safety of care at the frontlines. OBJECTIVE: We conducted a qualitative study to categorize and describe barriers to teamwork posed by PPE and distancing in the emergency setting. METHODS: We conducted 55 semi-structured interviews between June 2020 and August 2020 with personnel from two emergency departments serving in a variety of roles. We then performed a thematic analysis to identify and construct patterns of teamwork challenges into themes. RESULTS: We discovered two types of challenges to teamwork: material barriers related to wearing masks, gowns and powered air-purifying respirators, and spatial barriers implemented to conserve PPE and limit coronavirus exposure. Both material and spatial barriers resulted in disrupted communication, roles and interpersonal relationships, but they did so in unique ways. Material barriers muffled information flow, impeded team member recognition and role/task division, and reduced belonging and cohesion while increasing interpersonal strain. Spatial barriers resulted in mediated communication and added physical and emotional distance between teammates and patients. CONCLUSION: Our findings identify specific aspects of how intensified PPE use disrupts teamwork and can inform efforts to ensure care quality and safety in emergency settings as PPE use continues during and, potentially beyond, the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic.
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Serviço Hospitalar de Emergência , Pessoal de Saúde/psicologia , Equipe de Assistência ao Paciente/normas , Equipamento de Proteção Individual , Distanciamento Físico , Qualidade da Assistência à Saúde , Barreiras de Comunicação , Humanos , Relações Interpessoais , Pesquisa Qualitativa , Papel (figurativo) , São Francisco/epidemiologiaRESUMO
BACKGROUND: How some organizations improve while others remain stagnant is a key question in health care research. Studies identifying how organizations can implement improvement despite barriers are needed, particularly in primary care. PURPOSES: This inductive qualitative study examines primary care clinics implementing improvement efforts in order to identify mechanisms that enable implementation despite common barriers, such as lack of time and fragmentation across stakeholder groups. METHODOLOGY: Using an embedded multiple case study design, we leverage a longitudinal data set of field notes, meeting minutes, and interviews from 16 primary care clinics implementing improvement over 15 months. We segment clinics into those that implemented more versus those that implemented less, comparing similarities and differences. We identify interpersonal mechanisms promoting implementation, develop a conceptual model of our key findings, and test the relationship with performance using patient surveys conducted pre-/post-implementation. FINDINGS: Nine clinics implemented more successfully over the study period, whereas seven implemented less. Successfully implementing clinics exhibited the managerial practice of integrating, which we define as achieving unity of effort among stakeholder groups in the pursuit of a shared and mutually developed goal. We theorize that integrating is critical in improvement implementation because of the fragmentation observed in health care settings, and we extend theory about clinic managers' role in implementation. We identify four integrating mechanisms that clinic managers enacted: engaging groups, bridging communication, sensemaking, and negotiating. The mean patient survey results for integrating clinics improved by 0.07 units over time, whereas the other clinics' survey scores declined by 0.08 units on a scale of 5 (p = .02). PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Our research explores an understudied element of how clinics can implement improvement despite barriers: integrating stakeholders within and outside the clinic into the process. It provides clinic managers with an actionable path for implementing improvement.
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Liderança , Atenção Primária à Saúde/organização & administração , Melhoria de Qualidade/organização & administração , Comunicação , Comportamento Cooperativo , Humanos , Estudos Longitudinais , Estudos de Casos Organizacionais , Pesquisa Qualitativa , Inquéritos e QuestionáriosRESUMO
Introduction: Joint problem-solving orientation (JPS) has been identified as a factor that promotes performance in fluid teamwork, but research on this factor remains nascent. This study pushes the frontier of understanding about JPS in fluid teamwork environments by applying the concept to within-organization work and exploring its relationships with performance, mutual value recognition (MVR), and expertise variety (EV). Methods: This is a longitudinal, survey-based field study within a large United States healthcare organization n = 26,319 (2019 response rate = 87%, 2021 response rate = 80%). The analytic sample represents 1,608 departmental units in both years (e.g., intensive care units and emergency departments). We focus on departmental units in distinct locations as the units within which fluid teamwork occurs in the hospital system setting. Within these units, we measure JPS in 2019 and MVR in 2021, and we capture EV by unit using a count of the number of disciplines present. For a performance measure, we draw on the industry-used measurement of perceived care quality and safety. We conduct moderated mediation analysis testing (1) the main effect of JPS on performance, (2) mediation through MVR, and (3) EV as a moderator. Results: Our results affirm a moderated mediation model wherein JPS enhances performance, both directly and through MVR; EV serves as a moderator in the JPS-MVR relationship. JPS positively influences MVR, irrespective of whether EV is high or low. When JPS is lower, greater EV is associated with lower MVR, whereas amid high JPS, greater EV is associated with higher MVR, as compared to lower EV. Discussion: Our findings lend further evidence to the value of JPS in fluid teamwork environments for enabling performance, and we document for the first time its relevance for within-organization work. Our results suggest that one vital pathway for JPS to improve performance is through enhancing recognition of the value that others offer, especially in environments where expertise variety is high.
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Objectives: While psychological safety is recognized as valuable in healthcare, its relationship to resource constraints is not well understood. We investigate whether psychological safety mitigates the negative impact of resource constraints on employees. Methods: Leveraging longitudinal survey data collected from healthcare workers before and during the COVID-19 crisis (N = 27,240), we examine how baseline psychological safety relates to employee burnout and intent to stay over time, and then investigate this relationship relative to resource constraints (i.e., the inadequacy of staffing and tools). Results: Using hierarchical linear models, we find that psychological safety has enduring protective benefits for healthcare workers during periods of stress, and that these benefits mitigate the negative consequences of resource constraints for burnout and turnover intent over time. Conclusion: These findings extend the empirical basis for psychological safety and suggest that investments in building psychological safety can foster employee resilience and organizational commitment, even when resources are strained.
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Esgotamento Profissional , COVID-19 , Pessoal de Saúde , Humanos , COVID-19/prevenção & controle , COVID-19/psicologia , Esgotamento Profissional/psicologia , Esgotamento Profissional/prevenção & controle , Masculino , Feminino , Estudos Longitudinais , Pessoal de Saúde/psicologia , Adulto , SARS-CoV-2 , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Reorganização de Recursos Humanos , Inquéritos e Questionários , Resiliência Psicológica , Segurança PsicológicaRESUMO
Aligning culture to be similar across work units is a common organizational tactic, but its appropriateness for the multidisciplinary context of healthcare is far from certain. Variation in perceptions of culture across large health systems may serve a functional purpose in delivering high quality care and ameliorating job stress; however, past research in healthcare has focused on culture as the average set of values and norms (i.e., cultural content) rather than on (dis)agreement about values and norms among organizational members (i.e., cultural structure). This survey-based study examines both cultural content (averages among individuals) and structure (distances between individuals) in departments of a large U.S. healthcare organization (total sample = 26,314 workers, response rate = 84%). We used linear models to associate four commonly used culture measures with outcome measures (perceived care quality, intent to stay, and manageable job stress). We found substantial heterogeneity in perceptions for multiple culture types. We found curvilinear relationships between heterogeneity for all culture types and outcomes, suggesting that heterogeneity promotes positive outcomes up to a certain point after which the positive effect declines. For research, our findings point to the importance of studying culture in healthcare with greater focus on heterogeneity; for practice, this study highlights how culturally-focused efforts to improve care quality and worker experience in healthcare should be more precise about balancing cultural alignment and heterogeneity.
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Cultura Organizacional , Humanos , Masculino , Feminino , Adulto , Estados Unidos , Inquéritos e Questionários , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Estresse Ocupacional/psicologia , Qualidade da Assistência à Saúde/normas , Atenção à Saúde/organização & administração , Pessoal de Saúde/psicologia , Pessoal de Saúde/estatística & dados numéricos , Satisfação no EmpregoRESUMO
Healthcare organizations face stubborn challenges in ensuring patient safety and mitigating clinician turnover. This paper aims to advance theory and research on patient safety by elucidating how the role of psychological safety in patient safety can be enhanced with joint problem-solving orientation (JPS). We hypothesized and tested for an interaction between JPS and psychological safety in relation to safety improvement, leveraging longitudinal survey data from a sample of 14,943 patient-facing healthcare workers. We found a moderation effect, in which psychological safety was positively associated with safety improvement, and the relationship was stronger in the presence of JPS. Psychological safety and JPS also interacted positively in predicting clinicians' intent to stay with the organization. For theory and research, our findings point to JPS as a measurable factor that may enhance the value of psychological safety for patient safety improvement-perhaps because voiced concerns about patient safety often require joint problem-solving to produce meaningful change. For practice, our conceptual framework, viewing psychological safety and JPS as complementary factors, can help organizations adopt a more granular approach towards assessing the interpersonal aspect of their safety climate. This will enable organizations to obtain a more nuanced understanding of their safety climate and identify areas for improvement accordingly.
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The existing literature has considered accountable care organizations (ACOs) as whole entities, neglecting potentially important variations in the characteristics and experiences of the individual practice sites that comprise them. In this observational cross-sectional study, our aim is to characterize the experience, capacity, and process heterogeneity at the practice site level within and between Medicaid ACOs, drawing on the Massachusetts Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (MassHealth), which launched an ACO reform effort in 2018. We used a 2019 survey of a representative sample of administrators from practice sites participating in Medicaid ACOs in Massachusetts (n = 225). We quantified the clustering of responses by practice site within all 17 Medicaid ACOs in Massachusetts for measures of process change, previous experience with alternative payment models, and changes in the practices' ability to deliver high-quality care. Using multilevel logistic models, we calculated median odds ratios (MORs) and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) to quantify the variation within and between ACOs for each measure. We found greater heterogeneity within the ACOs than between them for all measures, regardless of practice site and ACO characteristics (all ICCs ≤ 0.26). Our research indicates diverse experience with, and capacity for, implementing ACO initiatives across practice sites in Medicaid ACOs. Future research and program design should account for characteristics of practice sites within ACOs.
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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Managers in health care today face an array of digital technologies that assist or augment certain human tasks. But these technologies are often fraught and present challenges to managers, whose competencies must evolve to keep pace with technological advancements. METHODS: Drawing on theory about technology, work, and organizations, we present a human-technology continuum to facilitate this discussion for managers. Furthermore, we illustrate how managerial competencies are linked to the entire human-technology continuum, rather than to specific technologies, using diabetes management examples. RESULTS: The human-technology continuum indicates that augmentative technologies are layered onto assistive ones in health care settings. This suggests that technological advancements not only enhance but alter managerial competencies. CONCLUSIONS: Digital technology stretches the boundaries of managers' day-to-day work in health care. Therefore, we make the following suggestions so the managers can be responsive to ongoing digital transformations: restructuring work, training the workforce, neutralizing threats, establishing ethical boundaries, and building partnerships.
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In healthcare, organizations increasingly call on clinicians and staff to team up fluidly to deliver integrated services across disciplines and settings. Yet little is known about how clinicians and staff perceive of team membership in healthcare environments where team boundaries are often ambiguous and continually shifting. We draw on the context of primary care in the United States, where fluid multi-disciplinary teamwork is commonly exhorted, to investigate the extent to which clinicians and staff perceive of various roles (e.g., physician, front desk) as members in their teams, and to identify potential implications. Using a survey fielded within 59 clinics (n = 828), we find substantial variation in individuals' perceptions of the roles they consider as team members during an episode of care (e.g., mean team size = 10.60 roles; standard deviation = 5.09). Perceiving more expansive sets of roles as team members exhibits a positive association with performance as measured by care quality (b = 0.02; p < .01) but a curvilinear association with job satisfaction. Separating an individual's perceived core (roles always perceived as part of the team) and periphery (roles sometimes perceived as part of the team), perceiving a larger core is positively associated with performance (b = 0.03 p < .01). In contrast, perceiving a larger periphery is marginally negatively associated with performance (b = -0.02, p < .10). This appears to be driven by divergence from the norm perception of the core, i.e., when individuals attribute to the periphery the roles that are considered by most others to be core. Our findings suggest that individuals viewing the roles they must team with more expansively may generate higher quality output but experience a personal toll. Delivering on the ideal of team-based care in dynamic environments may require helping team members gain clarity about their teammates and implementing policies that attend to job satisfaction as team boundaries shift and expand.