New thesis: "How can health care organizations create value?: business model explorations"

What is the main focus of your thesis?

My thesis attempts to increase the knowledge in how health care organizations can create value. This is done by looking at different management concepts; researchers’ understanding of Value-based Health Care (VBHC) and how business model thinking can be applied.

What are the most important results?

The understanding of VBCH in literature is poor among researchers. In a systematic literature review, we were able to demonstrate that the use of business model frameworks has increased significantly in the last decade in health care. However, there is some ambiguity about what a business model really is. Several different business model frameworks with different components have been used in a variety of health-care contexts to describe specific business model components, assess economic benefits, classify, analyze, create new (especially in e-Health), and evaluating business models. But few frameworks have been practically applied.

The Business Model Canvas (BMC), covering four business domains: the value proposition, customer interface, infrastructure management, and financial viability, guided our data collection and analysis and helped identify that managers conceptualized a hospital business model differently, primarily related to customer segments and a tension between espoused (care delivery, education, research) and de facto (care production facing cost cutting demands) value propositions.

Four distinct perinatal business models were identified within the same regional health system (New Thinkers, a Local Service Provider, Continuous Capacity Keepers, and a Hybrid) and ranged from more innovative to more traditional institutions.

How can this new knowledge contribute to the improvement of people’s health?

Hopefully, our findings could result in better and more well-functioning health care organizations, which could contribute to the improvement of people’s health at a lower cost.

It’s important that managers and policy makers develop a deeper understanding of VBHC and business models in order to create sustainable improvement strategies that generate value. A business model analysis can provide the basis for proactive discussions (policy makers, managers, staff) about how health care organizations want, should and could generate value by understanding how business model components build upon each other to deliver, create and capture value.

What are your plans?

I will probably continue being involved in research in the future. My focus right now is to work as a physician. Hopefully I will be able to combine this with a business development role in the future. But I’m open. I love to learn new stuff.