Measuring Organizational Capacity to Accelerate Health Care Innovation in Academic Health Centers

Abstract

In an era of rising clinical costs and shrinking federal research dollars, the survival of the academic health center may depend on its capacity to cultivate high-impact innovations in care delivery on an accelerated basis. Yet, the health sciences literature offers little guidance regarding the key organizational determinants most likely to facilitate such innovation. We report on the conceptualization, development, and preliminary testing of a new 21-item Accelerated Healthcare Innovation Capacity scale for addressing that knowledge gap. Instrument development followed a standardized process, including expert panel testing of the new scale's content relevance validity. A sample (N = 53) of academic health center administrators, clinicians, and faculty affiliated with a single organization volunteered to complete the Accelerated Healthcare Innovation Capacity scale in survey form. Data were analyzed to evaluate scale reliability, internal consistency, and construct validity. High-expert agreement (overall S-CVI of 0.91) was obtained on content relevance validity. Cronbach α for the scale was 0.941. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed the theoretical soundness of the scale's conceptual framework, which showed high-impact health care innovation support to be a complex, multidimensional concept involving key facilitating factors across 3 major constructs—that is, Culture, Structure, and Policy—with implications for future research and managerial practice, particularly for staff development educators engaged in evaluating quality management and organizational change strategies.