Welcome to the newly designed Health Care Management Review (HCMR). While the external look and feel of HCMR may be different, rest assured that new owner Lippincott Williams & Wilkins will maintain the journal's original purpose "to apply theoretical frameworks and principles to health services management."

Throughout its 28-year history, HCMR has provided scholarly works to its readers and maintains that mission with this issue. The journal will continue to solicit manuscripts from authors who reflect a diversity of services, agencies, organizations, and professional bodies. HCMR will carry on its highly regarded peer review process upheld by former coeditors Margarete Arndt, DBA, and Barbara Bigelow, PhD. I extend my thanks to Drs. Arndt and Bigelow for their commitment to HCMR and recognize them for the journal's achievements during their tenure.

My academic and health care leadership experience has led me to appreciate the value of being able to access literature that provides a sound research base yet offers implications for and experiences in practice. Considering the well-known delay in the diffusion of innovation, it is important to make such scholarly works available to those in practice. This is one way to impact patient outcomes in an era when measurement of outcomes dominates daily practice discussions and decisions and guides scarce resource allocation.

In turn, my professional expertise has helped me to appreciate the value of approaching daily practice with sound theoretical and research applications. As a health care leader, I have benefited from contracting with an academic research center. This helped staff to understand how to access the latest research, take part in testing outcomes, report implications, and in some instances participate in replication of studies. When an organization has this type of practice setting, it benefits patients in immeasurable ways. It also benefits the staff by providing an opportunity for their intellectual growth and a role in the generation of knowledge. The academic partner in this structure benefits from a practice setting that gives the researchers valuable information for further research and exploration and more direct access to the practice setting.

Creating a journal that reflects this type of research-practice partnership sets a high standard of delivery. In 2004, HCMR will undergo an expansion of content and will seek to share its expanded content with greater readership. This effort focuses on providing the service sectors with access to the wealth of information from academic research. As is well known, health care research achieves maximum impact when it is successfully implemented. A diverse selection of manuscripts will be solicited to include multidisciplinary application of principles and experience in health care administration. A combination of continuing and new editorial board members will help to shape this editorial policy and set strategic directions for HCMR.

Your feedback will be appreciated as we expand HCMR. New author guidelines appear at the end of this issue and are available electronically by contacting [email protected]. Feel free to forward these guidelines to potential authors in support of the journal's renewed evidence-based mission.

I look forward to working with you.

SueEllen Pinkerton, RN, PhD, FAAN

Editor-in-Chief