Managing Healthcare Service Ecosystems: Abstracting a Sustainability-Based View from Hospitalization at Home (HaH) Practices

Francesco Polese, Luca Carrubbo, Francesco Caputo and Debora Sarno
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Francesco Polese: Department of Business Sciences, Management and Innovation Systems, Salerno University, Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, 84084 Fisciano, Italy
Luca Carrubbo: Department of Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry, Salerno University, Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, 84084 Fisciano, Italy
Francesco Caputo: Department of Pharmacy, Salerno University, Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, 84084 Fisciano, Italy
Debora Sarno: Department of Management, Sapienza University of Rome, Via del Castro Laurenziano, 9, 00161 Rome, Italy

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 11, 1-15

Abstract: Sustainability seems to be a hot topic today upon which a paradigmatic transformation is going on; this affects many fields and sectors by revealing the significant implications for actors’ participation, such as in healthcare. Today, healthcare calls for renewing and increasing its own main processes of hospitalization, as inspired by the current new light of sustainability; hospitalization at home (HaH) practices allow for new forms of hospitalizations, which are much more adherent to the real needs of patients and caregivers. Studies in service dominant logic (S-D logic) on service ecosystems help us in understanding which are the dynamics that are shaping actual conditions in healthcare. With the aim of contributing to the challenging debate about the role of “sustainability for healthcare”, this manuscript proposes a conceptual framework for investigating healthcare domains through the interpretative lens provided by the service ecosystems view. Previous managerial contributions are analyzed in an attempt to emphasize the contact points between studies about service ecosystem and sustainability so as to outline the possible roadmaps for sustainability in the healthcare domain. The three dimensions of HaH—efficiency of healthcare service, effectiveness in resource usage, and patients’ satisfaction—have been identified as possible levers on which promoting healthcare processes inspired by sustainability principles and their relations with the three pillars of sustainability science—the economy, society, and environment—have been analyzed. The reflections herein are finally discussed for proposing possible future directions for research interested in promoting a sustainability-based healthcare management.

Keywords: healthcare; service ecosystem; hospitalization at home; sustainability; sustainable service ecosystem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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