Health Care Management

Research in "Health Care Management" concentrates on health care facilities as social organizations. Issues include the effects of management and leadership decisions on staff, business performance indicators and patient outcomes. The research perspective in this field is the relationship between people and organizations. Our research focus springs from the basic premise that in any health care system the patient, or customer, should be the main focus of attention. In a broad sense, it deals with influencing factors on how health care systems provide their services to their customers. Of the almost infinite number of possible influencing factors, particular attention is paid to psycho-social factors within the health care organizations.

Our goal, therefore, is to investigate psycho-social aspects of the work organization, management, cooperation in teams and work groups, as well as competition and collaboration between the various teams, professional groups and special interest groups with regard to the system's ability to provide its services to the customer.

Current research projects concentrate mainly on the fields of patient safety, safety practices and attitudes, and patient safety programs.

For a more comprehensive understanding of these issues, aspects of the health care systems themselves must also be taken into account. These aspects represent the second main focus of the research conducted at the Research Institute for Health Care Management and Health Economics.

Health Economics

Research in "Health Economics" concentrates mainly on analyzing national and international health care systems and health care reforms from an economic and socio-political perspective, investigating the relationships between the system level and the various participants in the system, and evaluating and applying the methodology of health care research.

Health care systems worldwide are faced with daunting challenges resulting from many different factors, including demographic changes, technological progress, changes in the clinical picture of widespread diseases, and the internationalization of the health care market.

Because of national jurisdiction issues, most health care reforms within the EU are developed on an individual, domestic basis. However, these reforms are usually a reaction to changing conditions in Europe and the rest of the world and often result in many different conflicts between the restrictions of economics and economic policies on the one hand and the social and socio-political expectations placed on health care systems on the other. Organizational aspects must also be taken into account in order to fully comprehend these complex systems.

Methods

Understanding complex systems like health care systems requires the application of methodological approaches capable of handling this complexity without unnecessary simplification. The empirical research conducted at the Research Institute for Health Care Management and Health Economics is oriented towards a balanced mix of methods taken from various quantitative-empirical approaches to psycho-social and health economics-related phenomena. One special emphasis is the development and application of methods from non-linear dynamic system theories like Synergetics and chaos theory.