Hospital boards and the decision to renew the full service management contract.
Precious research has been unable to establish a clear association between "full service" management contracts and improvements in hospital performance, but it has shown that hospital board members are highly satisfied with the arrangement. Presented here are findings from a recent survey of board members in contract-managed hospitals that confirm a strong and consistent pattern of board member satisfaction with contract management. However, it is argued that board satisfaction and intentions to renew cannot be explained by improvements in objective measures of hospital performance. It is further suggested that board perception may be influenced by retrospective rationality and that intentions to renew may result room growing dependence on the contractor and an imperfect market for substitutes.
D003258:Consumer Behavior / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003284:Contract Services / Q000592:standards*; D003625:Data Collection; D005376:Financial Management / Q000592:standards*; D006075:Governing Board; D006739:Hospital Administration / Q000639:trends*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D014481:United States