Business Commons^™

Disruptive Innovation In Health Care: Business Models, Moral Orders And Electronic Records, Karin Garrety, Ian Mcloughlin, Gregor Zelle

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

There is widespread consensus that current healthcare costs are unsustainable, and that efficiencies could be achieved by reorganising care and making greater use of information technology, in particular nationally available electronic health records. Such approaches have, however, been difficult to implement, partly because incentives for uptake are weak. In this article we argue that the difficulties go deeper than calculations of costs and benefits, and include disruptions to the complex moral orders that surround the production and exchange of health information. Using the introduction of national electronic health records in England and Australia as examples, we show how attempts to …

What Happens When Digital Information Systems Are Brought Into Health And Social Care? Comparing Approaches To Social Policy In England And Australia, Susan Baines, Penelope Hill, Karin Garrety

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This review article offers a brief comparative overview of approaches to the application of public sector information systems in England and Australia, with particular reference to health and social care. Since the 1990s, reforms to the public sector in both countries have looked to information and communication technologies (ICTs) from the private sector as the key to modern, citizen-centred services. These efforts have been conducted in the wider context of New Public Management, with the emphasis on the marketisation of government services, reducing the size of the state, and improvements in efficiency. Both countries are typically seen as being at, …

Reconfiguring Early Childhood Education And Care: A Sociomaterial Analysis Of It Appropriation, Melinda Plumb, Karlheinz Kautz

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Existing studies of IT within early childhood education and care settings are scant, and those that do exist traditionally utilise a Cartesian world-view where humans and IT are separate self-sufficient entities with properties. In this worldview, change is attributed to either the technological or the human entity, leading to limited, either techno-centric or human-centred accounts of IT implementation and use. We reframe the activities in an early childhood organisation as a process of appropriation, and utilise a sociomaterial theory of technology appropriation alternative to the Cartesian worldview. We contribute a rich account of the changes that occur to the practices, …

Innovation Within An Early Childhood Education And Care Organisation: A Tri-Perspective Analysis Of The Appropriation Of It, Melinda Plumb, Karlheinz Kautz

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Empirical studies on information technology (IT) in early childhood are scant, despite an increasing number of early childhood education and care organisations choosing to innovate with IT. This paper presents a framework to understand the appropriation of IT as an innovation within such an organisation. The framework consists of three perspectives on innovation: an individualist, a structuralist and an interactive process perspective. While the first focuses on concepts such as leadership, IT champions, previous IT exposure, the second focuses on organisation size, parents as stakeholders, competitors, government compliance and regulatory requirements. The third perspective views the innovation as a dynamic, …

Aged Care Safety Dilemma: Caring-For-Self Versus Caring-For-Residents, Lynnaire Sheridan, Teslime Agim

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Aim To identify aged care specific work health and safety management issues by applying James Reason's safety culture theory to one residential aged care provider in Australia. Methods Qualitative, semi-structured interviews with frontline care staff at three residential care facilities - all operated by the same provider - garnered employee perceptions of the safety culture and aged care specific challenges in their work environment. Thematic analysis of participant responses against the premises of James Reason's safety culture theory was undertaken. Results An aged care safety dilemma exists for frontline staff between looking after their own safety, a fundamental premise in …

Improving National Hospice/Palliative Care Service Symptom Outcomes Systematically Through Point-Of-Care Data Collection, Structured Feedback And Benchmarking, David Currow, Samuel Allingham, Patsy Yates, Claire Johnson, Katherine Clark, Kathy Eagar

Sydney Business School - Papers

Purpose Every health care sector including hospice/palliative care needs to systematically improve services using patient-defined outcomes. Data from the national Australian Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration aims to define whether hospice/palliative care patients' outcomes and the consistency of these outcomes have improved in the last 3 years.

Methods Data were analysed by clinical phase (stable, unstable, deteriorating, terminal). Patient-level data included the Symptom Assessment Scale and the Palliative Care Problem Severity Score. Nationally collected point-of-care data were anchored for the period July-December 2008 and subsequently compared to this baseline in six 6-month reporting cycles for all services that submitted data in …