No abstract

No abstract

Scholars claim that the outcomes of health interventions are the products of three factors: the size, the penetration and the sustainability of their effects. Nonetheless, the prevailing biomedical ethic of care engenders a mere ‘fix-it’ approach, which focuses on the clinical treatment of the disease and neglects the role of patients in the process of care. This approach undermines both the size and the penetration of health interventions. From this standpoint, the authors examine different health interventions aimed at improving the size and the penetration of their effects through the empowerment of the patients and their involvement in the provision of care. They are confronted in terms of two different criteria: the ‘intensity’ of the health care co-production and the ‘breadth’ of the health-related needs contemplated. Besides, their outcomes—in terms of health status improvement, patients’ satisfaction and cost savings—have been contrasted. A detailed case study dealing with a pilot project launched in Italy, which involved full-fledged empowerment of the patient, is presented. It is compared with similar initiatives carried out in other European and non-European countries, with the purpose of stressing the peculiarities of the former and explaining the reasons for its success. The findings of this study support the exploratory hypothesis that the higher the intensity of co-production and the wider the breadth of health-related needs considered, the better the outcomes of health interventions.

Sustainability is momentous for the appropriate functioning of health care systems. In fact, health and sustainability are two strictly related values, which could not be separately sought. While studies discussing the contextualization of this issue with respect to the distinguishing attributes of health care systems are rapidly blooming, there is still little agreement about what is ultimately meant by sustainability in the health care arena. On the one hand, attention is primarily focused on the proper use of available financial resources; on the other hand, people engagement and empowerment are gradually arising as a crucial step to enhance the viability of the health care system. This paper tries to identify, from a conceptual point of view inspired by the European integrative movement, the different shades of sustainability in health care and proposes a recipe to strengthen the long-term viability of health care organizations. The balanced mix of financial, economic, political, and social sustainability is compelling to increase the ability of health care organizations to create meaningful value for the population served. However, the focus on a single dimension of sustainability is thought to engender several side effects, which compromise the capability of health care organizations to guarantee health gains at the individual and collective levels. From this standpoint, further conceptual and practical developments are envisioned, paving the way for a full-fledged understanding of sustainability in the health care environment.

Due to the spread of COVID-19, new challenges and opportunities for business innovation have emerged, including the way work is organized and designed. In particular, pandemic created the conditions for the most extensive mass teleworking experiment in history. While there is a wide literature on the effects of teleworking as a business innovation, mainly from an environmental perspective, there are few studies investigating the public perceptions regarding teleworking and, in particular, studies that draw from social media analyses. Based on these considerations, a big data analysis has been carried out in order to frame the public perceptions about teleworking on Twitter. The six-months sentiment analysis of about 11,000 tweets shows that the ecological value of telework is not perceived by people; surprisingly, in a pandemic context of growing ecological concern, there is no significant evidence of environmental awareness in relation to teleworking. However, the positive and negative concepts which emerge in relation to teleworking and similar terms can be assimilated to the benefits and pitfalls highlighted in the literature, which are related to economic or social sustainability. This has important implications for practice in organizations employing teleworking, which are highlighted in the conclusion, together with the limitations and future research avenues.