New models of planning and management control in Portuguese public hospitals

Abstract

New Public Management asserts the superiority of private sector management model over bureaucratic model of public organizations, arguing that the last tend to be static or inefficient and the first are intrinsically flexible and efficient. Thus, there is full advantage in transferring private management models to public organization. In Portuguese public hospital organizations, the institutionalization of the New Public Management ideology reached its high point, mainly, through the 2003 reform, which preconizes the introduction of market model in public hospital network. Therefore, strategic planning and management control instruments have become very important for the definition, negotiation and control of financial, economic and clinical goals and objectives. To identify the process of strategic planning, and which, how and why certain monitoring instruments are used in public hospitals, we developed a qualitative and exploratory investigation based on an intentional sample of four case studies. Despite different technical and clinical realities, the hospitals share the same context and there is evidences of isomorphic practices. This study is especially useful for policy makers and hospital managers and it contributes for international knowledge transfer on a theme of growing concern common to developed societies.