Prescription for Change

This book focuses on the use of strategy for the purposes of managing and controlling change in health services. The book explains the application of strategy to the management and control of change in health services, as well as providing some of the groundwork for professionals, managers or not, who are charged with or interested in change. Also the book provides tools for change that can be used by anyone, inside or outside the health care system, at any level and in a unit of any size. It also provides everyone in a particular organisation with a common set of ideas and a common vocabulary. Strategy can enhance existing approaches to informing the decision-making process by restoring the context to models and analytical approaches, which otherwise strip research of contextual issues and their relevance to the complex pathways of health and empirical findings of population. Strategy also offers a vehicle for bringing society's preferences, even when not rational, into the decision-making process, for balancing uncertainty and certainty, and for balancing complexity and simplicity. The goal of this book is to propose that strategy can be a suitable foundation for the analysis of various actors and events, as well as the prescription of a course of action in health care systems and in the provision of health services. By taking into account strategic interventions as well as strategic interactions, it is possible to predict and therefore to foster change among actors and within organisations.