It is well known that mergers often occur in waves, and this paper develops a new mechanism for merger waves: expectations over industry shocks. We develop a simple test of this explanation and use it to explore the role of expectations in the context of the 1990s hospital merger wave. Managed care such as Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) started to become popular in the late 1980s and u...

T Affordable Care Act (ACA) has unleashed a merger frenzy, with hospitals scrambling to shore up their market positions, improve operational efficiency, and create organizations capable of managing population health. The figures are impressive: 105 deals were reported in 2012 alone, up from 50 to 60 annually in the pre-ACA, pre-recession years of 2005–2007.1 This activity could have lasting rep...

BACKGROUND Operating rooms (ORs) are resource-intense and costly hospital units. Maximizing OR efficiency is essential to maintaining an economically viable institution. OR efficiency projects often focus on a limited number of ORs or cases. Efforts across an entire OR suite have not been reported. Lean and Six Sigma methodologies were developed in the manufacturing industry to increase efficie...

introduction: european foundation for quality management has designed the efqm model to determine the rate of organization development and excellence and construct ways to achieve organizational excellence. this model is used to compare the current situation of each organization with an ideal organization. the aim of this study was to determine the performance self-assessment scores in selected...