Managed services’ developmental areas within acute care hospitals

Health care institutions are increasingly outsourcing services to managed service companies. As a result, the span of control for managers of these services (departments) can increase rapidly. This research investigated the developmental areas needed by managers as they assume multiple departments within acute care hospitals. The research identified 23 training areas from qualitative research on multi‐department managers in acute care hospitals. Analysis of variance was then used to test whether three distinct groups of management differed significantly in their perceptions of the importance of the training areas for their successful career development. Significant differences were found for nine of the 23 training areas. In addition, the ability to achieve a level of expertise through development in several diverse areas was found to be far more important to today's managers in managing multiple departments in hospitals than tenure in a position of management.