Reorganizing ambulatory services for the 1990s: challenges and issues

With the increased demand for care rendered in an ambulatory setting, hospitals are finding that they must reorganize their service complement and locations to keep up with market demand and respond to competitor initiatives. This issue of DRG Monitor describes an approach to determining what needs to be done, addresses factors that should be considered, and provides a model derived from a case study of a hospital. This approach goes beyond the tradition of viewing each department and/or service that offers ambulatory care as an entity unto itself. Instead, this paper illustrates how hospitals can look at the ambulatory components of departments and services from a product-line perspective so that they can maximize efficiency and link related areas in order to build upon their respective market potentials.