Health Services Design Based on Innovations in Two Hospitals in Mexico

Medical services are designed for the prevention, cure or stabilization of the patient in the perspective of improving the health of population which they serve and their quality of life. The improvement, efficiency and quality of these services are often sought through innovation in hospital management, whether in its strategic, key support, auxiliary or enabling processes. Hospitals have become providers of a complex nucleus of services in the health system that reach beyond their institutional borders, thus making it possible to incorporate different forms and actors in the innovation process. This approach serves to refer to and evaluate the main innovations that have been made over the past 5 years in two hospitals, one in Mexico City and another in the State of Mexico and provides answers to questions about: the kind of processes they were oriented towards; what role the owners or managers played; who operated them; their users, the technology or, knowledge, national policies or programs; and the context in which the interventions occur. As past studies show that hospitals in Mexico innovate due to external institutional initiatives, the relative importance of the innovations presented in this paper is classified into management, medical and medical products and services.