Application of porter’s strategies in lebanese hospitals

Abstract

The performance of hospitals has been shown to differ markedly in accordance with the degree of environment-organization fit. Consequently changes in the adoption of the various generic strategies in different contexts have been shown to vary. There are only two reports on the applicability of Porter’s strategies in hospital settings, one by Kumar et al. on hospitals in the United States hospitals and the other by Hlavacka et al. on Slovak hospital industry. The purpose of this chapter is; (1) to identify the types of strategies used in Lebanese hospitals, low-cost leadership, versus service differentiation, versus hybrid form often referred to as dual competitive strategy, (2) to investigate the performance of these hospitals with respect to quality of care, and (3) to analyze the correlation between the different types of strategies and levels of quality of care. This prospective study was performed using a variation on a modified questionnaire initially described by Kumar et al.