In recent years, the
Japanese hospital environment has changed significantly. With the current uncertainty, it is important for hospitals to select
management strategies to clarify the direction in which they should
proceed. However, research on Japanese hospitals’ management strategies has
only recently begun with too few studies in this area. Hence, this study
clarified the management strategies of Japanese private hospitals and explored
the hospital characteristics that affected strategy selection.
A self-administered
questionnaire was mailed to 5682 private medical institutions operated by
medical corporations throughout Japan in March 2013, and 459 responses with no
missing data were used for analysis. Factor analysis yielded four factors: “bed
conversion and downsizing (Factor 1),” “diversification of medical and nursing
care (Factor 2),” “expansion in business scale (Factor 3),” and “expansion of
income from non-insured medical care (Factor 4)”. Logistic regression analysis
revealed that Year Founded (before 1965), Hospital Location (municipalities
with populations smaller than 100,000), Hospital Type (psychiatric hospitals
and mixed-care hospital), and Hospital Income and Expenditure (deficit) had
significant positive impacts on the choice of Factor 1. For Factor 2, Hospital
Type (sanatorium ward and mixed-care hospitals) and Hospital Income and
Expenditure (constant surplus) had positive impacts. For Factor 3, Hospital
Type (general hospital) and Bed Counts (more than 200) had positive impacts.
For Factor 4, Hospital Type (general hospital) had positive impacts.
In summary, older
hospitals, hospitals in rural areas, psychiatric hospitals, mixed-care
hospitals, and hospitals with deficits tended to choose bed conversion and
downsizing. Sanatorium ward hospitals, mixed-care hospitals, and hospitals with
a constant surplus tended to choose diversification of medical and nursing
care. General hospitals and large hospitals tended to choose expansion in
scale, and general hospitals tended to choose expansion into non-insured
medical care. So the planning of mid- to long-term management strategies
suitable for each hospital and their steady execution are required.
Article by Yuji Mitadera, et al, from Japan.
Full access: http://mrw.so/2KeX24
Image by HDR, from Flickr-cc.
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