Revival: Management In Health Care Systems (1984)

Health care system has suffered from poor management from the beginning. The physician is a private entrepreneur who is concerned, and rightly so, with the one doctor/one patient relationship. The hospitals have been traditionally poor in management skills because they are operated on a breakeven basis in which charges are designed to meet expenses. In addition, there is little finesse in cost accounting because the failure to use cost centres and more sophisticated accounting techniques have resulted in a situation where there is no direct relationship between costs and charges. The traditional management text books offer little help. These books are concerned with management for sales and profits which are totally foreign to the medical environment. The books usually deal with the business problems whereas the medical care system is a bureaucracy and should be understood as such. In this book, the author has tried to present much of the traditional management information in the form of material which will be of use to the medical community.