ISU Associate Professor Ruiling Guo recognized for outstanding dissertation

by Central Michigan University for a 2015’s Outstanding Dissertation Award.

“I was very pleased with this award and recognition,” Guo said.

Guo’s dissertation research is related to evidence-based management in health care administration.

“Evidence-based management is about making decisions using the best available research evidence in conjunction with professional wisdom, organizational value and facts and stakeholders’ concerns,” Guo said.

The concept of evidence-based management is originally derived from evidence-based medicine. Administrators’ decisions in health care management have a significant impact on the quality of patient care delivery and the success of health care organizations, Guo said. Patient safety, quality of care, widespread demands for reducing heath care cost and value-based purchasing all require health care administrators to use an evidence-based approach to make decisions based on the best available evidence in health care organizations.

According to Guo however, existing literature shows that health care administrators support evidence-based practice but they have been slow to adopt evidence-based management in their own professional practice.

The purpose of Guo’s study is to use structural equation modeling and the theory of planned behavior to predict current U.S. health care administrators’ intentions to use evidence-based management and examine what factors influence their behavior toward the use of evidence-based management. This study has significant implications for practicing health care administrators and health leaders in U.S. health care organizations.

“The findings of this study helps researchers explore some possible interventions that may change health care administrators’ behavior in the adoption of evidence-based practice in health care management decision-making,” Guo said.

For more information contact Guo at guoruil@isu.edu.