The name Health Care Management Review is reflective of the purpose of the journal: to thoughtfully and scientifically address issues of relevance to health care administrators and managers. More concretely, the name has three ramifications.
One, the name of the journal focuses on health care management. Health care management research has the health care manager or administrator as the central actor or audience. By this, I mean that the research focuses on issues immediately germane to the practice of management and administration of health care organizations, specifically health care organizations that provide direct health services. The most obvious area of health care management research includes the various internal organizational processes that affect the delivery and quality of health care provided, predominantly human resource management and services oversight and improvement. The definition also encompasses a variety of potential foci, such as local, state, and federal health policies as experienced by health care administrators; population and community health assessment for the purpose of developing health care services; or challenges to implementing evidence-based practice of care, treatment, and management. Because the health manager or administrator is the actor or the audience, authors are expected to directly address this audience by giving sound recommendations and implications for the practice of health care management or administration that are derived from the research at hand.
Two, the name Health Care Management Review denotes that the journal does not focus exclusively on research. Review implies both that the breadth of health care management research is represented across the articles and that scholarly summative works are welcome. Scholarly summative articles, literature syntheses, and data-driven theory development pieces are as important to advancing the field of health care management as empirical works. The pressures to produce new knowledge seem to outweigh the pressures to collate, distill, summarize, or integrate existing knowledge. Yet, if existing knowledge is not kept current, relevant, and fresh, it will be overshadowed in the light of the latest data sound bite. It is the responsibility of the scholars to periodically do tuck pointing of older, solid theories and knowledge.
Three, the name implies that health care management is unique as both a practice and a discipline. Health care management is distinct from health services, health systems, or public health systems. What distinguishes health care management research as unique is not a trivial point but is part of the decision process of what to accept for publication. Health care management research and theorizing do not focus, for example, exclusively on health insurance or coverage structures or medical care outcomes, unless these are viewed from the perspective of the health care manager or administrator as the actor or the audience.
As the Editor-in-Chief, I tend to have these three ramifications in mind as I review submissions. By being true to the name of the journal, I hope to bring forward the best that the name Health Care Management Review implies.
L. Michele Issel, PhD, RN
Editor-in-Chief