Strategic planning process and quality of care : the effect of hospital cultural characteristics

Abstract

Background Healthcare systems worldwide, characterized by their complexity, have a high need for strategic planning to deal with increasing challenges in all fields either clinical or administrative. Structural hospital characteristics like hospital size, location, ownership, teaching status, nursing staff ratio and accreditation status have an effect on deploying strategic plans and the outcomes affecting quality of care. Objectives Reviewing the evidence of the role of structural hospital characteristics mainly hospital size, ownership, location, nursing staff ratio and accreditation status in determining the process of strategic planning at hospitals and effect of these characteristics on quality of care provided by these hospitals.

Methodology Electronic databases were systematically searched for key words to find the resulting relevant articles. Data was extracted and analyzed to find is there any relation between these hospital characteristics and strategic planning process and quality of care. Results A total 127 articles were identified, only 17 articles were included in that review depending on specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. In general there is some evidence that high relationship between different hospital characteristics like hospital size, location, teaching stats, ownership, nursing staff ratio and accreditation status and presence of good strategic planning process together with provision of high quality care in hospitals.

Conclusion However there are limited studies, the available research show some evidence that Hospital characteristics have effect on deploying good strategic plans. Some of these hospital characteristics affect the quality of care provided by the hospitals. Usually high levels of quality of care not exist without good strategic planning. Further research is needed in that field.