Employer-based coverage and medical travel options: lessons for healthcare managers.

Outbound medical travel (MT) involves U.S. patients going abroad to seek medical care. Over the past decade, there has been much discussion about MTs broadening appeal to several segments of U.S. healthcare consumers, but little is known about its penetration in the employer-based coverage (EBC) marketplace. The objectives of this article are to fill this gap and identify (1) the current status of MT options in EBC, (2) the differences between adopters and nonadopters of MT options, and (3) the factors that impede adoption. The results were obtained from a nationwide survey of human resources (HR) professionals making decisions regarding medical benefits. In this sample (n = 608), 16.8% of the respondents offered outbound MT options to their employees, often bypassing their insurance providers. Besides benefiting from a strong HR function, these organizations tended to be more involved in global business transactions, more open to change, more sensitive to cost savings, and more flexible in implementing administrative innovations than nonadopters were. An organizational climate conducive to innovation may explain their propensity to downplay the importance of well-known obstacles to implementation, such as the effort required to make changes, an emphasis on short-term goals, and the fear of liability. The lessons to be learned by U.S. healthcare managers are clear. To attract a value-conscious market, they must offer an attractive package of outstanding quality (clinical outcomes and patient experience) at competitive costs. Operational excellence may thus be the key to slowing the inevitable diffusion of MT options in EBC and maintaining or even expanding the U.S. market share of elective surgeries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR

Healthcare tourism: Accelerating diffusion through a more effective use of communication channels

In the backdrop of the healthcare crisis in the USA, many uninsured and underinsured Americans have decided to travel abroad to purchase medical care at a fraction of the cost. This phenomenon is often referred to as \u27medical tourism\u27 when it involves healthcare and a vacation, or more simply as \u27medical travel.\u27 Although impressive, the growth of this service innovation appears to be hampered by insufficient communication in terms of costs and quality as well as an over-reliance on mass media. Mass media may be good vehicles to disseminate information, but they lack the persuasive power necessary to convince the average person to seek medical care abroad. This paper highlights these communication shortcomings and offers suggestions of how to reach a larger number of individuals who could benefit from medical travel

Strategies to Foster Labor Flexibility

This empirical study identifies individual, organizational, and job factors of the range‐number element of labor flexibility. Tenure and emotional stability are found to increase a worker\u27s flexibility. Emphases on quality, speed, and flexibility (time) also have positive influences on labor flexibility. Finally, task complexity, joint responsibility for decision making, and automation require workers to expand their skill repertoire and therefore enhance their flexibility. This study focuses on a sound measurement of labor flexibility and proposes strategies to cultivate this capability

The labor-machine dyad and its influence on mix flexibility

The joint, mediating, and interactive effects of three elements of labor and machine flexibility on mix flexibility were tested empirically in a PCB assembly plant. Both subjective and objective data were collected. Some elements of labor and machine flexibility mediated the relationship between an emphasis on competitive priorities and mix flexibility. The interactive effects of machine and labor flexibility on mix flexibility confirmed prior findings that the pursuit of total flexibility is not desirable. For low levels of labor flexibility, increasing machine flexibility yields at the most a very moderate improvement in mix flexibility. When labor flexibility is high, increasing machine flexibility proves to be counter‐productive. These results may suggest that the traditional forms of labor flexibility need to evolve when technological capabilities are more fully exploited