Healthcare Management
This initiative is led by our two group leaders, Nathalie COMMEIRAS and Marlène BARREDA. The new challenges facing the healthcare sector include: patient pathways and the expansion of outpatient care, changes in how healthcare facilities are funded, evolving professional roles, interprofessional coordination, and the restructuring of healthcare regions. Indeed, the “Ma santé 2022” initiative calls for a reconfiguration of healthcare delivery. According to the Ministry, the healthcare sector is marked by inequalities in access to care and a desire among professionals to cooperate more effectively with one another. To address these challenges, the Ministry has identified several major initiatives: better directing patients according to their needs, improving the quality and relevance of care, leveraging digital technology to enhance care, reforming funding to encourage quality and cooperation, adapting training and professions to new challenges, and modernizing hospital governance and management.
RESEARCH TOPICS
In line with the government’s “Ma Santé 2022” initiative, over the next four years, MRM’s health division aims to examine, from a management perspective, the reforms and their effects.
That is why our goals for the coming years are centered on the following four themes:
Health-oriented communication and behavior: Thisresearch focuses on communication aimed at raising public and patient awareness of the positive and negative effects of certain practices (e.g., dietary habits). For example, communication regarding nutrition and obesity/overweight issues—through nutritional guidelines and public health campaigns—enables individuals to modify their behaviors. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to develop research on measuring patient/resident satisfaction and experience, not only in hospitals but also in post-acute care and rehabilitation (SSR), in nursing homes (EHPAD), in home hospitalization (HAD), etc., to ultimately contribute to the evaluation of these facilities and become an integral part of their funding.
Digital Health: This theme focuses on e-health, connected patients, the co-creation of health solutions for and with citizens, and digital and connected tools that link organizations and patients. By January 1, 2022, every French citizen will have a unique personal account providing access to a personalized service portal, which is intended to be expanded to include: shared medical records, approved health apps, secure messaging, and more.
Values, Care Pathways, and Performance Management: While current funding models have been the subject of numerous studies highlighting their unintended consequences, new funding models are emerging. Funding reform is indeed one of the major initiatives of Ma santé 2022, with a bold ambition: to shift from a system that encourages the proliferation of procedures and activity to a funding model that incentivizes prevention, supports collaboration among professionals, and reaffirms quality as the primary goal of care. We are witnessing the simultaneous emergence of reorganizations, performance measurement, and the establishment of boundaries between institutions. Thus, the concept of value creation and co-creation is a key element for organizations calling for new modes of governance;
Health and Professions: This theme aims to bring together research on quality of life at work, change management, psychosocial risks, transformations in the health professions—including changes in job roles and the tools used—as well as intra- and inter-professional coordination, the convergence of health professions, and shifts in power dynamics within and between organizations.
Activities and publications:
Since February 2011, the group has been working at a steady pace, with more than twenty researchers contributing to the research area’s momentum.
Most of the disciplines within the field of management sciences are represented here through the active participation of MRM researchers: accounting and management control, human resources management, marketing, information systems, etc.
In addition to MRM management researchers, the group includes economists and physicians. In particular, the group welcomes researchers from a medical research laboratory and the Department of Medical Information at the Montpellier University Hospital. Thus, the cross-cutting health research theme is part of a transdisciplinary dialogue within and around the management sciences, addressing contemporary health issues and challenges.
Close ties have been established with the Montpellier Center for Health Law, particularly in connection with research on obesity. The health group works closely with biology and health laboratories, as well as with the Research Department of the Montpellier University Hospital
This commitment to becoming an integral part of a regional competitiveness cluster is leading researchers in the health research cluster to forge closer ties with local economic and social stakeholders. To this end, a close collaboration with the Medical Information Department of the Montpellier Regional University Hospital (CRHU) is already underway, taking the form of participation in joint research meetings. Collaborations with the Regional Health Agency are currently being established.