Health Care Management Review (HCMR) enters its 35th year of publication, providing an opportunity to celebrate both the accomplishments of the journal and the discipline. HCMR has been graced with a history of strong and committed editors, especially Montague Brown followed by Margarete Arndt and Barbara Bigelow, all of whom worked hard and contributed greatly to HCMR reaching this landmark. HCMR also has been graced with numerous authors of quality and thoughtfulness, without whom the discipline and the journal would not exist. Least we forget, the publishers have found it profitable to continue publishing HCMR and have generously supported efforts to maintain the high quality of HCMR. For all of this, we are thankful.
To celebrate the past, each issue in Volume 35 will begin with a reprint of an article that has been highly cited in the literature. The continued relevance of each reprinted article is a testimony to what remains as issues and concerns as well as what has been viewed as valuable in the scholarship and practice of health care administration.
Over the past 35 years, we have witnessed the establishment of the discipline of health care administration. Evidence of this establishment includes the steady growth in subscriptions to HCMR, the growth in membership in organizations focused on health care administration, the increased number of health administration graduate programs, and the increased number of submissions to HCMR across a widening breadth of topics. During the same time, new data collection methodologies have emerged, computerized statistical analysis software have been refined and made accessible, and new statistical techniques have been developed and adopted. We also have witnessed the introduction of new theories and conceptual frameworks to guide both the research and practice.
At the intersection of the past and the future is the new HCMR journal Web site (http://journals.lww.com/hcmrjournal/pages/default.aspx). For HCMR subscribers, the entire 35-year portfolio of manuscripts is available online. We have also organized collections of HCMR articles around topics of current interest and plan to continually expand and update those collections. Our intent is to make the HCMR Web page increasingly interactive and responsive to the needs and requests of HCMR readers, with features such as links to videos from conferences and perhaps an editor's blog (a scary thought for me). Suggestions are welcome.
As I consider the next 35 years, the only certainty is that challenges and changes are ahead. In the immediate future, the trend will be for research and intervention projects to be highly multidisciplinary as a means to enrich our theories and knowledge. Theories will continue to become more textured as they evolve to succinctly capture processes. Hopefully, more ways will be found to integrate empirical evidence and solid theories into the daily functioning of health care organizations and administrators. Between now and 35 years in the future, the baby boomers' bulge will have come and passed. Although seeing on the other side of that is nearly impossible, surely the place and locations in which care is provided will have changed along with a new distribution of types of patients and illnesses. These changes will require new perspectives and knowledge on how to manage virtually, realistically, and with sensitivity. I will do my utmost to assure that HCMR will be there as the journal for health care management research.
L. Michele Issel, PhD, RN
Editor-in-Chief