Biotechnology will be defined here as the application of chemical processes that use either biological catalysts or biological raw materials and that occur in vats or tanks of man's design. We can illustrate each component of this definition with the example of home winemaking, in which the biological raw material is sugar and the biological catalyst is yeast. As the fermentation occurs, alcoho...

Objectives: This paper evaluates the drivers of profitability for a large sample of U.S. hospitals. Following a methodology frequently used by financial analysts, we use a DuPont analysis as a framework to evaluate the quality of earnings. By decomposing returns on equity (ROE) into profit margin, total asset turnover, and capital structure, the DuPont analysis reveals what drives overall profi...

OBJECTIVE This paper seeks to analyze healthcare facility managers' perceptions regarding the materials used for interior wall finishes and the criteria used to select them. It also examines differences in wall finish materials and the selection process in three major hospital spaces: emergency, surgery, and in-patient units. These findings are compared with healthcare designers' perceptions on...

In all data-rich industries, effective data management is essential if users and stakeholders are to expect value from corporate data. For market-driven enterprises, clean and readily accessible data is vital for maintaining a competitive edge. Quality, integrated data in comprehensive and targeted reports enables effective strategic and tactical decision-making, improves data security, increas...

For many stand-alone hospitals, a merger, partnership, or affiliation may be the only option to access scale and remain viable in the nation's emerging new healthcare delivery system. These organizations can consider many options for affiliation, including traditional options such as affiliation with regional academic medical centers, a merger or takeover to become the corporate member of a lar...

BACKGROUND Weak health systems in low- and middle-income countries are recognized as the major constraint in responding to the rising burden of chronic conditions. Despite recognition by global actors for the need for research on health systems, little attention has been given to the role played by local health systems. We aim to analyze a mixed local health system to identify the main challeng...

On July 21, 1998, the nonprofit Allegheny Health, Education, and Research Foundation (AHERF) filed for bankruptcy, with $1.3 billion in debt and 65,000 creditors. The Pittsburgh-based organization had pursued an aggressive strategy of acquiring physicians and hospitals in the Philadelphia area. Its dramatic collapse prompted the entry of a for-profit hospital chain into the Philadelphia market,...

This chapter analyzes the process of forming a coalition within a corporate network. The objective of the partner companies is to create a multi-stage manufacturing system, which generates a chain of increased value from raw materials to end-user market. This process is studied by cooperative game theory, through the key problems of maximizing the total profit and distributing it among the memb...

A bioeconomic model of a feedlot was developed for the comparison of beef cattle genotypes under specified management and marketing conditions. The optimization behavior of commercial feedlot managers is incorporated into the model using optimum economic rotation theory. The days spent in the feedlot (rotation) by a group of animals are derived using this theory so as to maximize an objective f...