Redesigning care delivery in hospital networks
PhD candidate: Charlotte Smit
Healthcare organisations face rising patient demand and persistent pressure on hospital capacity. In response, hospitals increasingly redesign how care is delivered: shifting infusion therapy from the day care unit to a hub, to the patient's home, or to homecare.
This PhD investigates what such care transformation needs to succeed in practice. The research is conducted within mProve, a collaboration of seven Dutch hospitals working on medication@home, a shared programme for moving medication administration outside the hospital. This setting connects the research directly to operational practice.
The project currently consists of the following studies:
- We examine how hospital networks apply learning health system principles in practice, through a multiple case study across several inter-organisational networks.
- We compare a manufacturer's and a hospital's cost-effectiveness assessment of the same care transition, the shift from an intravenous to subcutaneous medicine, to understand where and why their conclusions diverge.
- We develop an approach to extract diagnostic value from data hospitals already collect, so the effect of a care transition can be evaluated without adding registration burden.
- Building on interviews with oncology nurses about their experience of a recent care delivery change, we compare the capacity that different redesigns of the day care unit could theoretically free up with what is practically achievable.
Together, these studies aim to generate practice-based insight into what sustainable care transformation requires, from network collaboration to cost, data use and workforce capacity.HTML block
External supervisors: Jan Gerard Maring (Isala)