| 1. |
- Collin, Sven-Olof Yrjö, 1957-, et al.
(författare)
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Explaining municipal audit costs in Sweden : Reconsidering the political environment, the municipal organisation and the audit market
- 2017
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Ingår i: Financial Accountability and Management. - : Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Inc.. - 0267-4424 .- 1468-0408. ; 33:4, s. 391-405
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- With the purpose of explaining professional audit costs in Swedish municipalities, we hypothesised that audit costs are partly driven by various signalling and monitoring incentives in order to manage stakeholder relationships. Our model of the determinants of audit costs was tested on data from Swedish municipalities, thus extending the study of audit costs to political organisations in a Scandinavian institutional context. The test supported to some extent the traditional propositions of organisational complexity, risk and market determinants, as well as the proposition of the political environment. Our results indicate that audit costs are used to signal accountability, thereby suggesting that audit as a signal could be managed without managing professional auditors.
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| 2. |
- Bala, V., et al.
(författare)
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Towards measurement of person-centered care outcomes in outpatient nurse-led clinics
- 2017
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Ingår i: Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. - : BMJ Publishing Group. - 0003-4967 .- 1468-2060. ; 76, s. 1520-1520
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background Person-centered care (PCC) is increasingly emphasized as a key component of effective illness management and of developing high quality of care. Despite considerable progress of PCC in many areas of care there is currently a gap and a need for means to assess PCC practice in outpatient care. In rheumatology, PCC is considered an unmet need and further development and evaluation of this approach to care is thus of high priority. Objectives To develop an instrument for measuring person-centered care from the perspective of the person with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in nurse-led outpatient clinics. Methods A conceptual framework of PCC in the outpatient context and focusing on the meeting between the person with RA and the nurse and on the patient as an active care partner was undertaken. Based on this framework, qualitative interviews (1,2) and a literature review, a 35-item questionnaire was proposed and qualitatively tested regarding acceptability and content validity among 50 persons with RA attending a nurse-led outpatient clinic. Two versions of the questionnaire were tested: one using four response categories (0 = Totally disagree; 3 = Completely agree), and one using two response categories (0 = Disagree; 1 = Agree). Content validity was estimated by calculating Content Validity Index of the individual items (I-CVI) and of the overall instrument (S-CVI). Results Respondents found the items easy to understand (77%) and relevant (93%). Seventy-three percent of the respondents preferred the questionnaire version with four response categories. This version took a mean (SD) of 5.3 (2.5) minutes to complete. I-CVI values ranged from 0.87 to 1.00 and S-CVI was 0.94. About 80% of the respondents considered some items to be redundant. This resulted in a reduced 24-item draft questionnaire that yield a total score between 0–72. Conclusions A preliminary 24-item patient-reported PCC questionnaire was developed. Psychometric testing is needed for validation of this tool before implementation.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Westin, J., et al.
(författare)
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Development of a test for spatial working memory in Parkinson's disease : sensitivity to medication induced periodic performance changes
- 2012
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Ingår i: European Journal of Neurology. - : Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd. - 1351-5101 .- 1468-1331. ; 19:Suppl. 1, s. 551-551
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction: Spatial working memory is susceptible to impairment early on in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Later on, the wearing off phenomenon of motor function during dopaminergic treatment seems to carry over into working memory. Aim: To initialize development of a test capable of capturing the variation in spatial working memory within a patient’s daily functioning. Methods: The test consisted of 192 instances of n-back, yes/no tasks, with correctness and latency of response automatically recorded. We collected data from two persons, one PD patient and one healthy control, relatively evenly sampled regarding time-of-day. The patient took levodopa once every three hours and performed tests on 70 occasions (the healthy control on 33 occasions). A frequency band containing period lengths from 2 to 4 hours was defined as the region of interest in regard to the medication cycle. The resulting time series were digitally band-pass filtered allowing only the relevant frequencies to pass. Reasoning that filtering would preserve essential information if the time series were periodic, but eradicate it if they were not, we used as our primary outcome measure the correlations between filtered and unfiltered data. Results: Correlations between the pass-band relating to the levodopa intake schedule and the full data were positive and significantly larger for the patient than for the control. These differences applied to both latency and accuracy. Conclusion: This supports the hypothesis that the test is able to detect levodopa-dependent variations in spatial working memory.
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| 6. |
- Knutsson, Hans, et al.
(författare)
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Do strategy and management matter in municipal organisations?
- 2008
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Ingår i: Financial Accountability & Management. - : Wiley. - 1468-0408 .- 0267-4424. ; 24:3, s. 295-319
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In Sweden, a large share of public services are organised, produced and delivered by municipalities, large and small, rich and poor. Contextual conditions (size and location) and economic conditions (efficiency and wealth) differ considerably among these service-providing organisations. The question raised in this paper is whether a municipality's economic situation is a direct consequence of the contextual situation or the organisation's strategy and management - that is: Do strategy and management matter? Our analysis rests on a resource-based view of organisation strategy. Both quantitative and qualitative observations have been made. First, cost savings data from 50 municipalities were examined for patterns and relationships between contextual and economic conditions. Second, about 100 representatives - municipal executive board members and leading officials - from 20 municipalities with different characteristics were interviewed. In this paper we outline an analytical framework and propose that sound and sustainable provision of municipal service depends on whether organisational decision-making is in harmony with work methods and objectives. The results indicate that strategy and management do matter. Among the municipalities included in our study, we identify four prevalent basic strategies. Strategy tends to coincide with the economic situation rather than the contextual situation. A low-performing municipality tends to have a predominantly outward orientation in its decision-making, whereas a higher-performing municipality makes decisions with both inward and outward orientation.
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