Hospitals first started out as a place where various healthcare professional functions came together in order to care for and eventually cure patients. Consequently, as healthcare organizations grew bigger they adopted a vertical structure that was organized in departments and along the functions they supported. This, along with the further increasing specialization within the functions and the decentralization of care, that was planned with the intention of capturing economies of scales, resulted in a large number of small patient groups who were receiving care in small but highly specialized units that were in turn being supported by numerous supporting departments (Lathrop, Seufert, McDonald, & Martin, 1991). This structure resulted in a care delivery process that was fragmented and highly complex since the organization of care was not tailored to the patients needs but preformed according to the most relevant metical specialization or medical skills (Lee & Clarke, 1992). …show more content…
For this reason, healthcare organizations are rearranging their structures and are moving towards structures that are flatter and help the organization focus on cross-functional teams and processes rather than on departments (Vos, van Oostenbrugge, Lim, van Merode, & Groothuis, 2009). This shift leads to an increasing process-oriented organization of care within the sector and as result hospitals are looking to increase their process orientation (PO), as it could be the case that PO is the solution to a range of organizational problems in the healthcare industry. The basic idea is that the transition towards PO will lead to more patient-centered care, cost reductions and quality improvements (Vera & Kuntz,