Organisational capital and hospital performance in Hungary

Abstract

The paper presents a case study that explores the possibilities of measuring own-account OC (organisational capital) and its impact on hospital performance in Hungary. The authors' dataset consists of the 2010-2013 time series of 58 general hospitals owned by the government. Investment in own-account OC is measured both in a narrow sense and in a broad sense, depending on the range of employees contributing to OC. According to the estimates, the average stocks of OC in the examined period varied between 2.5% and 4.3% of the wages of all employees, provided that only managers and other executives were engaged in creating OC (narrow approach), and between 11.3% and 12.3% when employees in several non-managerial positions were also considered as contributors to OC (broad approach). The analysis provides some evidence that in the latter case, OC stocks have a slight positive effect on clinical performance measured by the cost weighted number of activities. In the narrow approach, a positive correlation could be detected if higher values were attached to the DRGs (diagnosisrelated groups) of complicated interventions and of treatment of serious diseases.

Public Intangibles: The Public Sector and Economic Growth in the SNA

“…O'Mahony et al . () find evidence suggesting that investments in organizational capital in terms of clinical managers in public hospitals in England (NHS Trusts) are associated with better outcomes in terms of mortality, and Hütti and Nagy () find that broad rather than narrow measures of organizational capital are mildly more correlated with cost‐weighted output measures for 58 government‐owned hospitals in Hungary. The prevalence of training among hospital professionals is a subject for further study.…”