School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway.
Faculty of Sciences and Technology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway.
J Health Organ Manag. 2024 Sep 13;ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print):66-82. doi: 10.1108/JHOM-01-2024-0011.
Tactical capacity planning is crucial when hospitals must cope with substantial changes in patient requirements, as recently experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, there is only little understanding of the nature of capacity limitations in a hospital, which is essential for effective tactical capacity planning.
DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: We report a detailed analysis of capacity limitations at a Norwegian tertiary public hospital and conducted 22 in-depth interviews. The informants participated in capacity planning and decision-making during the Covid-19 pandemic. Data are clustered into categories of capacity limitations and a correspondence analysis provides additional insights.
Personnel and information were the most mentioned types of capacity limitations, and middle management and organizational functions providing specialized treatment felt most exposed to capacity limitations. Further analysis reveals that capacity limitations are dynamic and vary across hierarchical levels and organizational functions.
RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS: Future research on tactical capacity planning should take interdisciplinary patient pathways better into account as capacity limitations are dynamic and systematically different for organizational functions and hierarchical levels.
We argue that our study possesses common characteristics of tertiary public hospitals, including professional silos and fragmentation of responsibilities along patient pathways. Therefore, we recommend operations managers in hospitals to focus more on intra-organizational information flows to increase the agility of their organization.
ORIGINALITY/VALUE: Our detailed capacity limitation analysis at a tertiary public hospital in Norway during the Covid-19 pandemic provides novel insights into the nature of capacity limitations, which may enhance tactical capacity planning.
当医院必须应对患者需求的重大变化时，战术能力规划至关重要，就像在新冠疫情期间所经历的那样。然而，对于医院能力限制的本质，人们只有很少的了解，这对于有效的战术能力规划是必不可少的。
设计/方法/途径：我们报告了对挪威一家三级公立医院能力限制的详细分析，并进行了 22 次深入访谈。这些知情人在新冠疫情期间参与了能力规划和决策。数据被聚类为能力限制的类别，对应分析提供了额外的见解。
人员和信息是最常提到的能力限制类型，中层管理和提供专业治疗的组织功能感到最容易受到能力限制的影响。进一步的分析表明，能力限制是动态的，因层次级别和组织功能而异。
研究局限性/影响：未来关于战术能力规划的研究应该更好地考虑跨学科的患者路径，因为能力限制对于组织功能和层次级别来说是动态的，而且系统上有所不同。
我们认为，我们的研究具有挪威三级公立医院的共同特点，包括专业的筒仓和患者路径上责任的碎片化。因此，我们建议医院的运营经理更加关注组织内部的信息流，以提高其组织的敏捷性。
原创性/价值：我们对挪威一家三级公立医院在新冠疫情期间的详细能力限制分析提供了对能力限制本质的新见解，这可能会增强战术能力规划。
