Journal of health and human services administration
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J Health Hum Serv Adm · Jan 2014
Linkages between organization climate and work outcomes: perceptual differences among health service professionals as a function of customer contact intensity.
The delivery of high-quality service, rendered by health service professionals who interact with customers (patients), increases the likelihood that customers will form positive evaluations of the quality of their service encounters as well as high levels of customer satisfaction. Using linkage theory to develop our conceptual framework, we identify four clusters of variables which contribute to a chain of sequential events that connect organization climate to personal and operational work outcomes. We then examine the perceptual differences of service professionals, grouped by intensity of customer contact, with respect to these variables. ⋯ Health service professionals are important resources because of their specialized knowledge, labor expense, and scarcity. Based on findings from our research, managers are advised to survey employees' perceptions of their organizational environment and design practices that respond to the unique viewpoints of each of the professional groups identified in this study. Such tailoring should help executives maximize the value of investments in human resources by underwriting patient satisfaction and financial sustainability.
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Nationwide from 1996 to 2004, the overall proportion of Emergency Department (ED) reimbursement ratios for outpatient ED visits decreased from 57% to 42%. The continued falling of ED reimbursement ratios, which is the share of ED charges that are ultimately paid, is an indicator of the financial pressures facing the ED. Once the healthcare reforms are put in place what will the impact be on reimbursement rates of overburdened and underfunded emergency departments. ⋯ Who pays for the ED services does impact the ED's bottom line. The privately funded patients will provide an ED with a higher reimbursement ratio per year as compared to those patients who are publicly or self pay. This explains why EDs that provide care for 40% or more publicly or self pay patients have seen a decline in reimbursement ratios. Healthcare reform has the potential to change and possibly improve safety net ED rate of reimbursement depending on how private, public and self pay patients pay for ED services.