Search

This study investigates how Quality Management (QM) programmes, particularly the Baldrige excellence framework, provide an approach to enhance healthcare organisational performance. Two independent methods were used to examine the short-term and long-term effects of winning the Baldrige award and the specific influence of common QM practices on results. The first method assesses the Baldrige Award's impact on hospital performance by examining patient survey data and shows that initial quality improvements are not sustained in the long term. The second method uses confirmatory semantic analysis (CSA), a text-mining method, to analyse 22 Baldrige award-winning applications to determine the relationship between QM practices and organisational results in healthcare settings. The results show that only three QM practices – measurement, analysis, and knowledge management (MAKM), leadership, and operations focus – significantly contribute to organisational performance. Furthermore, CSA findings highlight the dominant role of leadership in driving performance outcomes, with other factors in the framework showing nonsignificant mediation effects. By exploring both the overarching effectiveness of QM programmes across different time lengths and specific practices that contribute to performance, this research provides academic insights with practical application in the healthcare industry. Importantly, the findings highlight the nuanced relationship between QM initiatives and organisational excellence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Drugs (Prices Control) Order of 2013 in India regulated the prices of certain essential and life-saving drugs to ensure their affordability and availability, expecting an increase in sales of those drugs. The authors study the effects of the regulation on sales volumes of each regulated drug using a synthetic control approach with sales data from a comparable country that did not experience a regulatory change. They assess the robustness of the results via multiple empirical approaches to triangulate the findings. Contrary to the order's objectives, they find that sales volumes declined for regulated drugs. Since the order placed restrictions on production levels and on drugs exiting the market, the lowered margins of regulated drugs could have pushed pharmaceutical firms to reduce their marketing expenditures on them. The authors provide evidence of such a reduction using detailing data from a large pharmaceutical firm. The findings illustrate that this shift in detailing adversely affected prescriptions from physicians without formal medical degrees who treat poor and disadvantaged people in India—patients that the order was intended to help the most. A survey the authors conducted shows that these physicians rely on detailing more than medically trained doctors. Taken together, the results provide insights into the strategic actions of firms when faced with regulations, and highlight their unintended consequences. The generalizable nature of the study's findings across a broad set of medications has implications for governmental agencies in terms of the need to account for the entire ecosystem when implementing such regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)