Healthcare organizations face pressure to organize services efficiently and in a customer-oriented manner. They have been criticized about the fragmented service structures and the negative effect of it on the effective use of resources (e.g., Nolte et al., 2012). Service architecture has significant effect on how the services are designed, assembled, provided, and consumed (e.g. Ulrich, 1995; Voss and Hsuan, 2009). Consequently, from the perspective of organizations’ performance, it is not indifferent what the service architecture is like.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest to apply modular architecture in services (Bask et al., 2010) and it has been proven in the literature that modularity can offer benefits to healthcare industry (Chorpita, 2005; Blok et al., 2010; Vähätalo, 2015; Eissens-van der Laan, 2016). However, the discourse this far has been rather theoretical, thus there is learning potential in modular service architectures and their interface management in healthcare setting through empirical research. Moreover, in regard to performance, there exists an examples how modular architecture has improved the performance in manufacturing (Lau et al., 2010; Lau et al., 2011), whereas within the healthcare literature discussion has been scarce. Therefore, this study takes a case study approach to examine if there are links between modular architecture, interfaces, and the high performance.
The study was conducted as a single case study in newly-founded, privately owned hospital operating in Finland. The case organization has been very successful in shortening the care pathway length for meniscus injury patient to one third of average of Finnish hospitals and simultaneously achieved high level of customer satisfaction. The services provided are similar to other organizations providing healthcare services, but their innovative service delivery process has proven to be more effective terms of duration and customer satisfaction.
The results show that the service architecture in the case organization is modular. They use standardized service components while still enable customization by providing opportunity for doctors and patients together create a unique care path. The case organization has also created clear descriptions of interfaces and how they are managed, that support minimizing the length of the process and increasing the patient satisfaction. Innovative performance measures have encouraged organization to manage the interfaces in new manner, they have e.g. assigned new tasks to enhance the patient’s recovery.
Results indicate that modular service architecture and the way in which interfaces are managed effect on organizations’ performance. Results are highly interesting from perspective of public health services and public-private collaboration where measurement indicators are typically multiple, more process than outcome oriented and concentrating on organizations’ internal processes. The study provides possibilities to learn from case organization’s service architecture and interface management practices that together with measurement indicators provided excellent results in performance. Similar practices have potential to bring remarkable societal impact also in public healthcare reforms and in cross organizational context when enhancing the overall system performance.
E3 - Health Care Management Reforms – Public Policy, Management and Accountability
