Abstract: This paper focuses on contemporary applications of hospitality expertise, concepts and training to the management of hospitals. When viewed at one end of the Product-Service Continuum, traditional hospitals may be argued to resemble a factory assembly line where medical treatments are produced as rationally as possible. However, given the complexities of job roles, variability of personal relationships, perishability of beds, and intangibilities associated with patient experiences, hospitals are nowadays increasingly being perceived and managed as services, where the service is provided to individual patients. By defining the hospital as a service provider new insights into how individual care is offered from different service industries can shed new light on the treatment of hospitalized patients. We have studied service systems in hospital settings. The paper seeks to demonstrate the ways in which hospitals are using expertise and training from organizations within the hospitality sector across the whole hospital organisation. Research presented from 3 international high-end hospitals shows that intensive care and nutrition treatment are seen as examples of areas in which a service orientation can potentially improve treatment outcome. Our method is a qualitative tri-continental case study with semi-structured interviews from three countries, the United States, Sweden and Singapore.

The health service industry is becoming increasingly internationalized. People are travelling increasingly longer distances for medical treatment. A new rapidly expanding medical tourism industry has emerged. For health service providers to compete they have to specialize and become more innovative. These innovative strategies are not limited to technical innovation, but also organizational- and service-related innovations. Treatment costs which influence the price paid for treatment are becoming a major factor influencing competition. We have looked at recent changes made within the European health care sector, to find evidence of a new innovative climate for the provision of medical treatment to patients. The emergence of Centers of Excellence is an example of responses to a new competitive climate in a global industry.