The relationship between hospital ownership, hospital process orientation and volume flexibility, an empirical study of 172 hospital departments in Shanghai

摘要

The objectives of this study were to analyses whether hospital ownership and hospital process orientation have a role on volume flexibility, and to discuss the implications of these relationships. A questionnaire was developed and sent to a random sample of 300 hospital departments in Shanghai. The response rate was 57%. The data were analyzed with confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling in LISREL. The results indicate that the model with relationships between hospital ownership, hospital process orientation and volume flexibility was found to be a reasonable representation of volume determining mechanism at hospital departments (p = 0.095, indicating no significant differences between the model and the data set). Ownership correlated strongly with process orientation (0.72) and volume flexibility (0.60). Given ownership, process orientation also correlated with volume flexibility (0.20).