Health Services Management: A Case Study Approach

Instructor Resources: Instructor’s Manual Today’s healthcare managers face increasingly complex challenges and often must make decisions quickly. When a difficult situation arises, managers can no longer simply “look it up” online or in the management literature. Properly “looking it up” involves knowing where and how to look, appropriately framing a research question, weighing valid evidence, and understanding what is required to make proposed solutions work.

Health Services Management: A Case Study Approach offers a diverse collection of case studies to help readers learn and apply key concepts of management, with an emphasis on the use of evidence in management practice. The case study authors, many of whom are practitioners or academics who work closely with practitioners, present realistic management challenges across a variety of settings. They examine potential responses to those challenges by health services managers and other stakeholders, and they provide a platform for meaningful discussion of opportunities and constraints for management decision makers attempting to implement change.

This edition includes 60 case studies—32 of which are brand new—arranged thematically into six sections: The Role of the Manager, Control, Organizational Design, Professional Integration, Adaptation, and Accountability. The new cases include the following:

• Better Metrics for Financial Management
• What Makes a Patient-Centered Medical Home?
• Doing the Right Thing When the Financials Do Not Support Palliative Care
• Hearing the Patient Voice: Working with Patient and Family Advisers to Improve the Patient Experience
• Managed Care Cautionary Tale: A Case Study in Risk Adjustment and Patient Dumping

Learning by example is one of the oldest forms of learning, and the case study approach offers a time-tested way for students and healthcare professionals to develop practical skills that are not easily acquired through lectures. Health Services Management has been used in classrooms since 1978, and this eleventh edition offers a fresh take on a classic text.

Ann Scheck McAlearney, ScD, MS, is professor of family medicine and vice chair for research in the Department of Family Medicine at the Ohio State University (OSU) College of Medicine. She also holds courtesy appointments at OSU as professor in the Division of Health Services Management and Policy in the College of Public Health and as professor of pediatrics. In 19 years at OSU, Dr. McAlearney has taught a variety of courses in organizational management, leadership, and strategic management for master’s and doctoral-level students, as well as a course on healthcare organization and financing for medical students. She has over 25 years of health services research experience and has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, 10 books (many coedited), and 80 book chapters. Dr. McAlearney received her bachelor of arts and sciences degree in English and biological sciences from Stanford University, her master of science degree in biological sciences also from Stanford, and her doctor of science degree in health policy and management from Harvard University’s School of Public Health.