CARING MORE BY DOING LESS? AN ENQUIRY ABOUT THE IMPACTS OF OUTSOURCING ON PATIENT CARE

This study seeks to understand the potential impact of outsourcing on healthcare processes. By referri ng to a wider scope of industries and sectors, as they have been the experimental fields of most of the studie s on outsourcing, we highlight the pros and cons of the externalization of activities related to patient ca re. Our purpose is to show and contextualize the (yet) ambi guous effects of relying on external partners in delivering services related to the health of patien ts. We argue that the seek for efficiency might som etimes hinder the global outcome of care; further we state that given the peculiar nature of the healthcare, outsourcing needs to be used within a wider strateg ic analysis of the activities. This study starts wi th a review of the literature on outsourcing strategies applied to healthcare sector and it also proposes a n analytical model for decision-making. The main conclusion is that healthcare organizations should set up proper mechanisms for the governance of the overall transactions related to outsourcing in order to ex tend the span of control over the external providers as long as the effectiveness and the efficacy of the g eneral outcome is not compromised. Both private and public health providers could benefit from a more reliabl e model for deciding on the span of their activities that can be outsourced.