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Table 1 Summary of results and contributions in relation to the research questions

From: Value configurations for balancing standardization and customization in chronic care: a qualitative study

Research question

Results

Contributions and implications

RQ1: How are the demands for customization and standardization manifested in managerial practice?

Manifestations of demands:

Customization:

- Desire for professional freedom

- Patient demands

- Expressed in some guidelines.

Standardization:

- Care pathways

- Guidelines for evidence-based treatments

- Routines for standard follow-ups

Standardization has two opposite rationales:

- Ensuring best practice (‘roof’)

- Limiting and streamlining care (‘floor’)

Combining standardization and customization is possible but difficult when resources are becoming ever scarcer.

Demands for standardization and customization permeate the healthcare system without clear connection to specific actors.

The clinical pathway and existing guidelines call for parallel handling of the demands, supporting the view that combined strategies are needed [19, 21].

The two rationales for standardization may be related to different attitudes to the demand [23, 50, 51] and deserves further investigation.

RQ2: How can the value configurations framework support the balancing of customization and standardization in practice?

Care operations could be mapped by corresponding value configurations.

Disagreements on corresponding value configuration could generally be referred to different levels of abstraction.

Care operations can seldom be organizationally separated to strictly follow pure value configurations.

The study supported generation of ideas for how to develop care operations to be more cost-efficient.

The value configurations framework [31, 51] may be useful for managers as a lens to understand and redesign organization of care.

A common and relevant level of abstraction need to be defined. More research is needed on how different configurations on different hierarchical levels can (or cannot) be combined.

Organizational separation of value configurations [33, 51] is not supported. Instead, parallel, combined, and/or intermediate configurations can be a more feasible path to improved efficiency. Some adjacent theories are pointed to for inspiration and future studies.