Change management in healthcare – a scoping literature review

Abstract

The healthcare sector is constantly changing due to many different factors, both external and internal, such as regulatory, organizational, technological, personnel, financial, and geopolitical change. Change management methods and tools are useful for effectively planning, implementing and monitoring change. The important issue is in which areas and to what extent change management is utilized in healthcare. The aim of this text is therefore to conduct a scoping literature review on change management in healthcare and to develop, based on the results of this research, a theoretical model of determinants and motives for implementing change management in healthcare. A scoping review of the literature was conducted to determine the extent to which change management is applied in healthcare organizations. Texts meeting the inclusion criteria were searched for in four databases: PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and EBSCO. The search was limited to texts published in English. Of the 247 publications screened, 73 met the inclusion criteria. Additionally, 1021 keywords were selected from the screened publications, of which 137 met the inclusion criteria and were approved for the keyword analysis. The keywords formed seven thematic clusters: human, change management, organization and management, leadership, healthcare delivery, hospital management, and productivity. There are a number of motives for using change management in healthcare, and all centre around a few determinants that can be divided into those directly related to the specifics of the healthcare sector and those directly related to management processes. These determinants and motives were included in the theoretical model.