title: Defining hospital's internal boundaries. An organisational complexity criterion.
abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide empirical evidences supporting the definition of hospital wards' boundaries in organisational designing processes, by suggesting services aggregation criteria that are focused on organisational complexity. In order to test the research hypotheses, a panel data analysis was conducted on Lombardy hospitals in Italy. Information was gathered both from administrative records - aggregated at in-patient ward level - and general registry offices. The results highlight that the wards offering integrated services perform better than those that are more specialised. However, for growing levels of within-complexity, the positive effects of formal integration between wards tend to reduce. Some guidelines for practitioners engaged in defining hospitals' organisational structures can be drawn from the empirical analysis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Management, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy. Electronic address: l.mariani@unibo.it.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mariani
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology and Social Research and CRISP, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Dario
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cavenago
mesh_terms: D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D006739:Hospital Administration; D017052:Hospital Mortality; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D017146:Models, Organizational; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Organisational complexity; Organisational design in hospital; Wards’ performance