The Relationship between HMO's Organizational Structures and Cost Reduction

HMO(Health Maintenance Orgarnization)의 내부조직구조와 의료비용절감과의 관계

This study investigates effcts of HMO internal structural arrangements on performance, specially cost reduction measured by hospitalization rate. This study formulates formalization, centralization measured by decision-making participation, differentiation, and coordination as structural factors, considering coordination as an intermediate factor between the rest of structural factors and hospitalization rate. The commonly used HMO types is assumed not effective in explaining performance differences. For the empirical test, I use bootstrap regression analyses with 48 HMOs. The results of the analyses show that HMO types fail to explain differences in hospitalization rate. However, dicision-making participation and differention effectively reduce hospiatalization rate, while frmalization increases hospitalization rate and coordination has nonessential effect on hospitalization rate. And, formalization and decision-making participation positively contribute to achieve coordination in HMO. These findings suggest that the theoretical framework derived from rational-citingency theory of formal organization better explains performance differences of HMOs than HMO types.