Author: Duran A and Wright S
. Pages: 242 Format: PDF Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
27/11/2019
eISBN-13: 9783030281724
This book seeks to reframe current policy discussions on hospitals. Healthcare services turn expensive economic resources-people, capital, pharmaceuticals, energy, materials-into care and cure. Hospitals concentrate the use and the cost of these resources, particularly highly-trained people, expensive capital, and embedded technologies. But other areas of health, such as public health and primary care, seem to attract more attention and affection, at least within the health policy community. How to make sense of this paradox? Hospitals choose, or are assigned, to deliver certain parts of care packages. They are organised to do this via “business models”. These necessarily incorporate models of care – the processes of dealing with patients. The activity needs to be governed, in the widest senses. Rational decisions need to be taken about both the care and the resources to be used. This book pulls these elements together, to stimulate a debate.