Salge Torsten Oliver, Vera Antonio
Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Health Care Manage Rev. 2009 Jan-Mar;34(1):54-67. doi: 10.1097/01.HMR.0000342978.84307.80.
Hospitals around the world dedicate increasing attention and resources to innovation. However, surprisingly little is known about the nature of hospital innovativeness and its relationship with organizational performance. Given both the specific characteristics of the hospital sector and the rather mixed evidence from other industries, a positive innovation-performance link should not be taken for granted but requires empirical examination.
The purposes of this study were to introduce a perspective of hospitals as vital generators of innovation, to unpack the concept of innovativeness, to propose a measurement model for hospital innovativeness, and to empirically investigate the innovativeness-performance relationship.
We conducted a large-scale empirical study among the entire population of public hospital organizations that are part of the English National Health Service (n = 173) and analyzed the data using exploratory factor and regression analyses.
Our analyses suggest a significant positive relationship between science- and practice-based innovativeness and clinical performance but provide less unambiguous support for the existence of such a relationship between innovativeness and administrative performance. In particular, we find that higher levels of innovativeness are rather associated with superior quality of care than with measurable bottom-line financial benefits.
Hospitals investing in innovation-generating activities might find their efforts well rewarded in terms of tangible clinical performance improvements. However, to achieve measurable financial benefits, numerous hospitals have yet to discover and capture the commercial value of some of their innovations-a challenging task that requires a holistic innovation management and an effective network of complementary partners.
世界各地的医院都越来越重视创新，并投入了更多资源。然而，令人惊讶的是，对于医院创新的本质及其与组织绩效的关系，我们知之甚少。鉴于医院行业的特定特征以及其他行业的证据参差不齐，创新与绩效之间的正向联系不应被视为理所当然，而需要进行实证检验。
本研究的目的是引入一种将医院视为重要创新源泉的视角，剖析创新的概念，提出医院创新的测量模型，并实证研究创新与绩效的关系。
我们对英国国家医疗服务体系中的所有公立医院组织（n = 173）进行了大规模实证研究，并使用探索性因子分析和回归分析对数据进行了分析。
我们的分析表明，基于科学和实践的创新与临床绩效之间存在显著的正相关关系，但对于创新与管理绩效之间这种关系的存在，提供的支持则不那么明确。特别是，我们发现较高水平的创新与卓越的医疗质量相关，而不是与可衡量的财务底线收益相关。
投资于创新活动的医院可能会发现，其努力在切实改善临床绩效方面会得到丰厚回报。然而，为了实现可衡量的财务收益，许多医院尚未发现并获取其部分创新的商业价值——这是一项具有挑战性的任务，需要全面的创新管理和有效的互补合作伙伴网络。
