Tag physician satisfaction

Exploring the Institutional Context of Physicians’ Work

John Lammers and I published this book chapter in 2009 in Dale Brashers and Daena Goldsmith’s excellent text Communicating to Manage Health and Illness (there’s even a kindle version). Let me know if you’d like a copy. Here’s a preview of the first few pages.

Health Care Institutions, Communication, and Physicians’ Experience of Managed Care A Multilevel Analysis

In this piece published in Management Communication Quarterly in 2007, we argued using multilevel modeling that the quality of communication between managed care representatives and physicians and physicians’ institutional beliefs about what makes for legitimate medical practice helps explain physicians’ reactions to managed care. The abstract:

This study uses the institutional theory of organizational communication (ITOC) to explain physicians’ reactions to managed care. ITOC posits that enduring beliefs and practices both transcend and shape particular organiza- tions and organizing. The authors find that physicians’ institutional beliefs moderated the negative relationship between managed care medical practice and satisfaction. ITOC also posits that the negotiation of institutional, environ- mental, organizational, and individual factors occurs through communication. Controlling for these factors, communication with managed care representatives remains significantly and positively related to satisfaction. The results provide support for ITOC and macro approaches to organizational communication research and offer insights for the management of professionals in general and physicians in particular.

Health care institutions, medical organizing, and physicians: A multilevel analysis

I’m publishing my research archive as the first posts on the sites so they’re accessible. Here’s the dissertation. Have a look at the abstract:

Managed care—the dominant mode of health care organizing and financing today—may threaten physicians’ satisfaction with practicing medicine, but research has revealed that it is not dissatisfying for physicians in all organizational settings. The institutional theory of organizational communication (ITOC) offers a multileveled explanation of physicians’ reactions to managed care based on their institutional identifications and communication with managed care organizations. A multileveled analysis of data from physicians (n = 1,049) in practices (n = 492) investigates this explanation. The results suggest that institutional identifications moderate the relationship between the experience of managed care and physician satisfaction, and offer evidence for the importance of the communication between managed care representatives and physicians. The results also provide an example of the applicability of multilevel modeling for organizational and health communication research.