Management Theory for the Scale and Spread of Integrated Care: A Critique of Conventional Approaches.

It has become increasingly clear that health care organizations must collaborate in profound ways with one another, as well as with community service organizations and a range of other stakeholders, in order to achieve the goals of improved outcomes, enhanced patient experience, and controlled costs. As a result, the challenge of "integrated care" has grown in profile and attention. The purpose of this symposium is to examine potential contributions from management theory to the conceptualization of the scale and spread of integrated care, and to generate novel insights for management theory in return. The symposium includes researchers currently working in Canada and the United States, and speakers will be addressing management theory for scale and spread in ways that are relevant across these and other health system contexts. Each speaker will be given 10 minutes to succinctly respond to the following 2 questions: 1. Briefly describe a theoretical concept or perspective that you see as being particularly valuable for the study of the scale and spread of integrated care. 2. Assuming that the current paradigm of scale and spread for integrated care is flawed in some way(s), what do you think this concept adds to the discussion? Following brief presentations of each panelist's responses to these 2 questions, the moderator will take audience questions. The moderator will encourage discussion on the relative value of theory at macro, meso, and micro levels of analysis for understanding the system-wide adoption of integrated care, and new insights for management theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]