En studie av rörelsen mot en processorienterad sjukvårdsorganisation - eller hur man får upp strutsar ur sanden

Sammanfattning: Health care costs in relation to GDP are escalating all over Europe and the Swedish health care industry is not an exception. Between 30 and 50 percent of resources used in health care are considered waste, in the sense that they don't contribute to increased health. This illustrates the big need for hospitals to become more efficient which is why many hospitals today are trying to move towards a process-oriented organization. This paper therefore aims to identify the elements necessary for this type of organizational change, the barriers encountered when moving from a functional to process oriented hospital as well as how to overcome them. The case study was conducted at Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset and shows the importance of not just transmitting a sense of urgency but also communicating that the upcoming change is long term. Furthermore, the study shows the importance of support functions such as it-systems and an organizational structure that supports the change agent as well as choosing this person wisely. Health care specific barriers are the lack of process management knowledge, strong professional hierarchies and individualistic culture, lack of integrated support systems, a vertical resource management as well as a big opposition towards management concepts from the outside. These barriers can be overcome by re-designing management concepts specifically for the health care sector through the removal of industrial terminology, emphasizing the long term goals and designing support as well as rewards systems underpinning the horizontal processes.