Allied Health Management Models: Impacts and Issues.
Chris Hanna1,2, Richard Olley21NNSWLHD, Tweed Heads, NSW, Australia2Griifith University, Brisbane, Qld, Australia
Abstract
Allied health professionals (AHPs) play an important role in the healthcare system, improving patient outcomes and healthcare efficiency. Management of AHPs occurs through various organisational structures, including profession-specific departments and clinical streams/divisions. Healthcare organisational structures should support clinicians to provide high quality clinical care.
A systematic review was conducted using the PRISMA method to determine the impacts of different models of allied health (AH) management.
PubMed, PsychInfo, CINAHL and Health Administration databases were interrogated to identify relevant articles. Articles published in English within the last five years that considered AH management structures within hospitals or health system were included. Studies that scored below 70% on the Standard Quality Assessment Criteria or papers that were not peer reviewed were excluded.
After deduplication, culling and quality assessment, four studies were included. A thematic analysis of the impacts of the identified management structures was conducted.
AH management models investigated in the literature included management through profession-specific departments and through dispersement into clinical streams/divisions. Thematic analysis revealed four interrelated areas of impact. These areas were clinical governance, human resources, corporate governance, and connection/isolation.
Management of AHPs through profession-specific departments positively impacted each of these four themes, improving clinical and corporate governance, human resource management, and connection of clinicians. This is contrasted to a dispersed management model which showed minimal positive impacts, especially in the theme connection/isolation.
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