Contemporary organizational strategies for enhancing value in health care

To a rapidly changing environment, health‐care organizations are adopting a variety of value enhancement strategies. Typically characterized as quality improvement activities, these strategies generally include efforts to improve: clinical effectiveness; financial performance; consumer satisfaction; employee satisfaction; and risk management/quality assurance activities. Early efforts involved the use of continuous quality improvement (CQI) or total quality management (TQM) strategies with a focus on improving financial performance, while clinical effectiveness has been a greater emphasis more recently. This study examines the manner in which 14 US health‐care systems, noted for innovation in quality improvement and value enhancement, are utilizing these activities to promote productive organizational change. An interview format, for use with key informants in each organization, was developed using a model with four dimensions – strategic, cultural, technical, and structural.