Measuring information exchange and brokerage capacity of healthcare teams

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore possible factors impacting team performance in healthcare, by focusing on information exchange within and across hospital’s boundaries. Design/methodology/approach Through a web-survey and group interviews, the authors collected data on the communication networks of 31 members of four interdisciplinary healthcare teams involved in a system redesign initiative within a large US children’s hospital. The authors mapped their internal and external social networks based on management advice, technical support and knowledge dissemination within and across departments, studying interaction patterns that involved more than 700 actors. The authors then compared team performance and social network metrics such as degree, closeness and betweenness centrality, and computed cross ties and constraint levels for each team. Findings The results indicate that highly effective teams were more inwardly focused and less connected to outside members. Moreover, highly recognized teams communicated frequently but, overall, less intensely than the others. Originality/value Mapping knowledge flows and balancing internal focus and outward connectivity of interdisciplinary teams may help healthcare decision makers in their attempt to achieve high value for patients, families and employees.

Functional leadership in interteam contexts: Understanding ‘what’ in the context of why? where? when? and who?

“…Journal of Information Technology, 28(4), 333-353. Team goals without mention of interteam interdependence (Carroll et al, 2016;Keller, 2001); team goals in intergroup competitions or coopetitions (Bullinger et al, 2010;Carbonell et al, 2019;van Bunderen et al, 2018); team goals in collaborative interteam contexts (Brion et al, 2012;Cha et al, 2015;Drach-Zahavy, 2011;Grippa et al, 2018;Somech & Khalaili, 2014;Tasselli & Caimo, 2019); system goals (Curnin et al, 2014;Millikin, Hom, & Manz, 2010;Schotter & Beamish, 2011;Zolper et al, 2013); both team and system goals (Friedman et al, 1992;Lee & Sawang, 2016;Lanaj et al, 2013;Susskind et al, 2011) 2. Where is leadership targeted?…”

“…Quantitative System Structural links were most effective at fostering cross-unit ties when organizational identification was high and unit-level identification was low; lateral transfers (i.e., shifting employees between hierarchically equivalent units) were more likely to foster cross-unit ties when both organizational and unit identification were high. Grippa et al (2018) Quantitative Team Highly effective teams were more inwardly focused (i.e., more internal communication ties) and less outwardly focused (i.e., less external communication ties) as compared to less effective teams.…”

Managing the resource allocation for the COVID-19 pandemic in healthcare institutions: a pluralistic perspective

“…Training set includes actual data, clustered functions and support vectors. All these are given as inputs for training the model (Grippa et al , 2018). Computation results displays the eigen vectors, eigen ratio, demand response, queueing and steady state function with a precision index of ±5%.…”

Evidence-Based Management for Performance Improvement in HealthCare

“…The contribution by Grippa et al (2018) investigates healthcare team interactions to redesign the care delivery model within a large US children's hospital and to increase the value for health actors (patients, families, and employees). They apply a social network methodology and focus on communication flow among patients, family members, and healthcare staff to measure knowledge flows, communication behavior, and the channels used to interact.…”