| The study of strategic management pursues a continual understanding of the factors that influence an organization's adaptation to innovation and change. The U.S. health care industry is one in which hospital managers face countless issues that require the organization to seek strategic decisions that provide a sustainable, competitive advantage. Frustrated with hospitals' historical unwillingness to adopt ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), physician specialists established strategic alliances among themselves or with well-funded surgery center companies to reduce the (a) cost, (b) complexity, (c) time, and (d) risk involved in the development of these facilities. Based on competition with their referring physicians and physicians' acceptance of strategic alliances with ambulatory surgery center management companies, hospital managers reacted. The framework for the study was a cross-sectional, one-time assessment of managerial attitudes and perceptions utilizing a survey instrument from a population of hospital executives and senior managers regarding their willingness to adopt physician strategic alliances (PSAs) in ASCs. Review of the literature enabled identification of influential factors and offered support to the chosen framework within which answers to the research questions were pursued. The research questions tested various hypotheses regarding hospital decision makers' perceptions of the (a) need, (b) relative value, (c) complexity, and (d) risk of innovation with physician strategic alliances in ambulatory surgery centers. As a result of this study, the data indicate that hospital senior managers' willingness to recommend PSAs in ASCs may be dependent on their perception of need and relative value but may not be dependent on their perception of organizational complexity or risk. |
