ABSTRACT
Modern hospitals are highly complex multispecialty, multidelivery organizations and contain multiple distinct clinical departments and business units. These departments may seem to operate independently with respect to clinical function, yet they are required to standardize certain operations to deliver superior care within a hospital setting. Due to the increasing complexity in healthcare delivery, previous “industrialized” organizational and business models are no longer relevant for hospitals, in which a good or service progresses along a single, preengineered path and results in a predictably consistent outcome. Present hospitals allow patients to coordinate multiple specialist visits, have labs drawn, receive imaging, and have patient charges reviewed all in the same day. The modern hospital, from a business perspective, takes on a federated model and more closely resembles a loose knit group of small business owners who have centralized (or outsourced) certain nonmedical administrative functions. An organizational model of this nature is highly dependent on connectedness and the ability for each department to efficiently exchange information.
