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CHAPTER 3
THE: FIELD OF HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
The field of health services research includes the persons and
resources employed to produce and disseminate knowledge about personal
health services. Although the field has certain features of an academic
discipline, it is not generally regarded as a distinct scientific
discipline with its own characteristic theories and methods. Rather,
the field gains its coherence by concentrating on questions and problems
pertaining to a particular set of activities, namely, the provision of
personal health services. In this sense, health services research is an
applied field; its priorities are established by societal questions and
problems about personal health services.
This chapter describes features of the field of health services research,
distinguishing them from characteristics of academic disciplines, and
sketches the history of the problems and circumstances that have shaped
the field's priorities and development.
Field as Distinct from Discipline
The body of knowledge known as health services research encompasses
findings from studies conducted from a variety of perspectives and
applying a variety of methods, many of which combine approaches of
several academic disciplines.* In this sense, the field is multidis-
clipinary. It does not, however, have a distinct theoretical framework
or set of characteristic concepts and methods ordinarily associated
*Health services research employs concepts, theoretical frameworks,
data, and methods from the field of medicine and other health profes-
sions (nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, etc.), the social and behavioral
sciences, the applied social sciences (social work, business and hospital
administration, etc.), industrial engineering, law, biostatistics,
demography, and geography.
33
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34
with academic disciplines. These and other differences between fields
and disciplines account for differences in their internal organization
and research priorities.
The major differences between research in academic disciplines and
that in applied fields are in their conceptual content, the purposes
for which research is done, and the sources of questions for research.
Research in academic disciplines is identified by its relationships
to particular conceptual frameworks. Economics, political science,
and sociology, for example, all focus on exchanges among individuals.
However, research in each of these disciplines usually concentrates
on selected features of exchanges that are relevant to its own conceptual
framework. An economist studying physician-patient exchanges, for
instance, might examine effects of prices on the volume and types of
services consumed or produced; a sociologist would be more inclined to
study the effects of organizational characteristics on interpersonal
behavior. Research is done to produce knowledge to be incorporated into
the theories of academic disciplines from which further questions for
research are derived. Findings are usually directed toward other
scientists within the disciplines working on related questions.
By definition, applied fields are problem-oriented. Their research
questions are drawn from the work of practical affairs, and their
theoretical and methodological approaches are more diverse than any
of the individual disciplines that contribute to the field. Research
on why people use different types of health services, for instance,
may draw upon concepts and methods of economics, psychology, and
sociology, using administrative or clinical definitions to categorize
"types of health services." As the questions that occasion research
are practical problems in the area being investigated, findings are
addressed to and used by persons who must deal with the problems as
well as by those who are interested in their implications for knowl-
edge in their scientific disciplines.tl]
While the purposes and content of research may differ between that
done by a person studying a health services problem frog the perspec-
tive of an academic discipline and another who identifies himself
as a '"health services researcher," knowledge in the field of health
services research encompasses the products of both. The crucial
features of studies that make them health services research are those
defined in Chapter 2, rather than the motives of researchers or the
perspectives and methods they employ in their research. An economist
studying the capital expenditures of hospitals to test theories of
the behaviors of nonprofit firms, for instance, produces health services
research regardless of his intentions and interests. Hence, the analogy
with biomedical research and development, which distinguishes between
basic and applied research is not entirely applicable to health services.
While many of the studies that contribute to health services research
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35
are done in response to practical problems, many others are done to
develop basic knowledge in the participating academic disciplines.
Because the field of health services research is identified by the
content of the research questions and findings, there is considerable
variation among the perspectives and interests of persons who contribute
to it. Lacking commitment to theoretical frameworks and methods that ~
unify academic disciplines, the field is divided into several groups on
the basis of several dimensions. First, because more persons who con-
tribute to the field identify themselves primarily with their disciplines,
the field is partitioned along disciplinary lines (e.g., health economists,
medical sociologists). Second, within disciplines, researchers subdivide
into groups sharing interests in particular features of health services.
For instance, among medical sociologists, some are interested in the
structure and dynamics of health care organizations and others concentrate
primarily on the illness behavior of individuals. Third, groups divide
among and within disciplines along particular substantive interests (e.g.,
mental health services, rehabilitation services). Finally, because many
issues in health services research are value-laden, researchers are often
divided by political and value orientations.
Although these circumstances are not unique to the field of health
services research, they point out the potential problems of characterizing
the entire field of health services research in terms of its purposes,
interests, and perspectives. Because the research priorities and agendas
of applied fields are set largely by societal definitions of problems and
issues, research emphases and perspectives change with changing circa
stances.
Origins and Development of the Field
The types of systematic inquiry and the organizational structure that
characterize the contemporary field of health services research have
developed only within the past 20 years. During this period, research
in personal health services became recognized subspecialties within
several academic disciplines, and professional groups, training programs
and specialized journals in health services research were established.
These developments, along with the enlarged and relatively regular sources
of federal support for studies in this area, have provided the institu-
tional structure by which the field of health services research
is identified.
Although health services research has only recently come to be recog-
nized as a distinct field of inquiry, it builds upon traditions of
research on health services that began in the opening decades of
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36
the Twentieth Century. As Odin Anderson has observed, systematic
research on health care emerged in the 1920s in response to concerns
about equity of access to health services, and its emphases have
historically reflected prevailing societal definitions of issues
surrounding the organization, financing, and quality of health
services.~2] As these emphases changed and evolved, participation
in the field and the varieties of settings in which research is done
broadened, and, increasingly, the federal government became its princi-
pal source of financial support.
The predominant policy issues of various periods in the history of
health services in the United States define four general stages of
health services research: its origins from 1900 to the 1930s, during
which the principal features of the nation's health services industry
took shape; the 1930s through the early 1950s, during which voluntary
health insurance emerged as the principal mode of financing hospital
services; the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s, which witnessed the
the extension of federal subsidies for training, hospital construction
and planning, and repeated changes in hospital reimbursement by Blue
Cross; and from the late 1960s to the present, during which costs,
reimbursment, quality of health care, and planning and regulation
became ma jar issues . ~3 ]
Origins: Pre-1930s
During the opening decades of the Twentieth Century, the nation's
personal health services industry consolidated in the private sector.
Medical care was purchased by the patient from physicians working in
solo practices and charging fees for each service and from independent,
voluntary hospitals. Care for indigent and medically indigent persons
was provided free or partially free by physicians applying a sliding
scale of fees, voluntary hospitals in receipt of philanthropic funds,
and public hospitals and clinics financed with local or state tax funds.
These patterns had been established without conscious planning or public
intervention and, with the exception of the efforts of organized labor
in the early 1900s to establish worlmen's compensation schemes and later
compulsory national health insurance, they raised few public policy
issues.
Research during this period was sporadic and largely descriptive in
nature. Sponsored by philanthrophic foundations, private associations,
and a few federal agencies, studies focused on prevalences of illness
in general populations and on the activities of local health departments.
Concern about the health and health care of the poor gave impetus in the
1920s to studies by the Public Health Service examining relationships
between income and morbidity, to investigations of infant mortality by
the Children's Bureau, and to a series of studies by the American Public
Health Association of the organization, expenditures, and accomplishments
of municipal health departments.
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37
The most ambitious effort of this period was the series of studies
undertaken by the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care (CCMC). Composed
of more than 40 eminent physicians, public health professionals, represen-
tatives of health care organizations, insurance companies, the general
public, and economists and statisticians, and sponsored jointly by eight
private foundations, the Committee undertook several studies from 1928
through 1932 that culminated in more than 70 reports and papers and a far-
reaching set of recommendations for the reform of health services financing
and organization. Among the more than 20 field studies undertaken by the
staff or under the C~mmittee's sponsorship were the first major population
surveys of use of personal health services, which revealed substantial
variations among income groups; projects that laid the groundwork for
estimating populations' needs for personal health services; and the
pioneering work on the potential benefits of the group practice form of
medical care organization.
1930s - 1950
Although the CCMC's recommendations in favor of group practice and the
use of ancillary medical personnel, prepayment for personal health
services, and community-wide planning for health care did not result
in immediate changes in the nation's health services industry, its
findings and insights were a major source of information and ideas in
the public debate concerning compulsory health insurance that re-emerged
during the depressions of the 1930s. In addition, they gave impetus to
a variety of more systematic and detailed studies of the organization
of medical practice and of the supply and distribution of health services.
In 1935-36 the Public Health Service undertook the first official National
Health Survey involving interviews of more than 700,000 households in 21
states, studies of activities of public health agencies in 94 communities,
and, in cooperation with the Department of Commerce, studies of the
financial situation of hospitals. Data frog the population survey with
those from the earlier CCMC study were to comprise the nation's information
base on the use of personal health services until the early 1950s. Data
from the survey of hospitals were extensively analyzed by staff of the
Public Health Service's Office of Public Health Methods, leading to the
first attempts to define health service areas for hospitals.
With the enactment of the Social Security Act of 1935, the Office of
Research and Statistics was created in the Social Security Administra-
tion. Staff in this office worked on estimating aggregate expenditures
for health services, making actuarial projections of alternative national
health insurance plans, and conducting surveys of the coverage of
developing prepayment plans. These efforts were joined in the mid-1930s
by several books and reports analyzing the cases for and against govern-
ment sponsored and voluntary health insurance.
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38
By the early 1940s, concern about the availability of personal health
services had given impetus to research on the geographic distribution
of medical personnel and facilities. The Public Health Service produced
a series of studies on the location of physicians in the United States
that culminated in the first estimates of optimal physician-population
ratios. In 1944, the Commission on Hospital Care of the American
Hospital Association, with the financial support of private foundations,
issued a report showing that hospital beds were unevenly distributed
and that their distribution was unrelated to needs for inpatient care.
Following enactment of the Hospital Survey and Construction Act of
1946, data from the Committee's studies were employed to establish
standards to guide the allocation of subsidies for construction of
hospitals.
Before the 1940s, most research on health services was done in the
United States largely by statisticians, economists, and physicians
employed by government agencies and private associations or by the staff
of commissions financed by private foundations. During the late 1940s,
programs for research on health services developed in universities, and
other disciplines began to become involved. Multidisciplinary teaching
and research programs in public health administration developed in
schools of public health, and, encouraged by the Agricultural Extension
Service of the Department of Agriculture, sociologists, social anthro-
pologists, and social psychologists were attracted to research on the
health care of rural populations.
1950s - 1965
The fifteen years between 1950 and the mid-1960s marked a great expansion
of research on health services and the beginnings of organizations and
associations devoted to furtherance of the field.
Debate over national health insurance having subsided, attention turned
in the early 1950s to questions of the extent and effectiveness of
voluntary health insurance coverage. The first truly national study
of health insurance coverage and use of and expenditures for personal
health services was undertaken in 1953 by the newly established Health
Information Foundation and repeated periodically over the following
decade. These studies, with the periodic National Health Surveys initiated
in 1956 by the Public Health Service, provided systematic descriptive
information that revealed continuing differences in volumes of personal
health services consumed by the poor and the uninsured as compared
to higher income and insured segments of the nation's population. By
the early 1960s, research on use of personal health services had become
a major area of study for social psychologists and sociologists interested
in relationships between social and psychological determinants of utili-
zation and for economists interested in the demand for various types of
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39
services under different insurance schemes. As attention shifted to
questions pertaining to the effects of modes of health services organi-
zation on utilization, comparative studies of rates of hospitalization
under solo practice, fee-for-service arrangements versus prepaid group
practices were done, showing the now familiar pattern of lower use of
inpatient services by populations enrolled in prepaid group practices.
Research on hospitals was stimulated by amendments in 1950 to the
Hospital Survey and Facilities Construction Act of 1946 authorizing
funds for studies in hospital administration. The Division of Hospitals
and Medical Facilities of the Public Health Service conducted intramural
research and sponsored contracted studies of patient groupings, hospital
classifications, and a variety of other questions-of interest to
economists and operations researchers. When the first explicit appro-
priations for support of extramural research were made in 1955, the
Public Health Service established the Hospital Facilities Study Section,
which in 1959 was broadened to become the Health Services Research Study
Section.
Research on health services during the 1950s produced several landmark
studies that incorporated innovative conceptual and methodological
approaches. In 1956, the Commission on Chronic Illness published its
three-volume report of its five-year study of chronic illness, two of
which reported findings from extensive field surveys and clinical
evaluations. The Commission on Financing of Hospital Care released its
three-volume set including essays on hospital costs and financing.
Evaluations of medical care were reported, based on comparative analyses
of stays in hospitals following surgery, review of charts, and observation
of physicians in office settings. Economists began applying concepts of
cost-benefit to particular illnesses, and engineers introduced and tested
the computer as an aid in medical diagnosis and patient screening and
monitoring.
By the early 1960s, the organizational base of the field of health
services research had begun to form. Programs in hospital a~ministra-
tion were underway in several universities, and, in the early 1960s,
multidisciplinary departments of community medicine began to appear
in medical schools. Subspecialties in health economics and medical
sociology had developed and were producing their first generations
of researchers with concentrations on aspects of personal health
services. New associations and groups within existing ones were
created to serve as forums for the dissemination of research ideas
and findings, and journals specializing in health services research
appeared (e.g., Health Services Research, Inquiry, Journal of Health
and Social Behavior, Medical Care).
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40
These developments were facilitated in large degree by the availability
of funds for extramural research from the federal government. By the
early 1960s, several sources had been established, including the authori-
zations for research on nursing established in 1955 by the National
Institutes of Health, studies of health care facilities sponsored under
1955 amendments to the Hospital Survey and Facilities Construction Act of
1946, and a Community Health Services Research Grants program initiated
in 1963 by the Division of Community Health Services of the Bureau of
State Services.
Mid-1960s to the Present
Since the mid-1960s, the emphases of health services research have been
influenced by two major trends: the institutionalization of health
services research within the nation's universities, and the expansion
of the federal government's roles in health care delivery, financing,
planning, and regulation. These trends have had the salutary effect of
concentrating a portion of the nation's intellectual resources on
important health care issues. On the other hand, demands for "targeted
studies" and immediate answers to complex questions have forced trade-offs
between longer term investigation of fundamental questions and shorter
term studies relevant to current policies and programs.
As funds became available in the mid-1960s for general-purpose health
services research and training, the locus of health services research
shifted to the nation's universities. In this setting, research became
markedly more theoretically- and analytically-oriented. Research on the
use of health services, for instance, began to quantify the social and
economic determinants of variations in use of physicians' services,[4]
and research on hospitals focused systematically on isolating causes of
variations in productivity, efficiency, and costs.~5] As in other areas
of research, attempts to apply theoretical models and sophisticated
analytic methods to complex questions not only produced new insights but
raised additional conceptual and methodological issues for research and
led to subspecialization within the field. In the area of hospital costs,
for example, the difficulty of defining and measuring outputs of hospitals
led economists to develop and test several competing models,[6] and re-
search on outcomes of care and health status produced a variety of
approaches.~7]
The traditions of health services research that developed in the 1960s
contributed important knowledge and methods that are being employed to
infold and assess contemporary health care policy. Rising costs of
health care, for instance, have led the federal and state governments
to institute several forms of regulatory programs whose effects are being
analyzed by health services research. Studies of the effects of the
Economic Stabilization Program on physicians' fees,[8] of prospective
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41
hospital reimbursement on per diem charges,[9] and of certificate-of-
need laws on hospital investment[10] build upon previous health services
research while raising relatively unexplored conceptual and methodo-
logical issues.
The current situation of the field of health services research differs
from that of previous periods, however. On the one hand, it enjoys the
benefits of having learned from the recorded experience of its predeces-
sors and of its access to the more powerful conceptual and methodological
tools of various cognate disciplines. On the other, it faces issues that
are vastly more complex and far-reaching in their consequences than those
of earlier periods at a time when expectations of the application of
knowledge from research are heightened and resources are scarce. In such
circumstances, the field of health services research is subject to
contending forces leading in one direction to research aimed at improving
concepts and methods and furthering knowledge about fundamental dynamics
within a health services system, and in the other to the application of
what is known to the development and assessment of health care policies
and programs.
These problems of the division of intellectual labor are neither new nor
unique to the field of health services research, nor can they be settled
by edicts. The field of health services ~ ~ ~
to a variety of forums and means of communication
nor ~
research currently has access
~ through which such
matters can be aired and debated. These should be employed to the fullest
extent if those who regard themselves as "health services researchers"
are to have a voice in the future development of the field.
_
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42
REFERENCES
1
2
3
4
s
6
7
8
Robert L. Eichhorn and Thomas W. Bice, "Academic Disciplines and Health
Services Research," in E. Evelyn Flook and Paul T. Sanazaro (eds.) Health
Services Research and R & D in Perspective (Ann Arbor: Health Admini-
.
Stratton Press, 1973), 136-149' and David Mechanic, Prospects and
Problems in Health Services Research," Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly/
Health and Society, 56 (Spring, 1978), 127-139.
Odin W. Anderson, "Influences of Social and Economic Research on Public
Policy in the Health Field: A Review," in Donald Mainland (ed.), Health
Services Research (New York: Milbank Memorial Fund, 1966), pp. 11-48.
.
Much of the historical information in the following sections is from:
Anderson, op. cit: E. Evelyn Flock and Paul J. Sanazaro, Health Services
Research and R&D in Perspective (Ann Arbor: Health Administration Press,
.
1973) ~ pp e 1~81e
Ronald Andersen, Toanna Kravits, and We Anderson (eds e ) ~ Equity in Health
Services: Empirical Analyses in Social Policy (Cambridge Ballinger
Publishing Co., 1975~.
Sylvester E. Berki, Hospital Economics (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington
Books, (1972), Chapters 2-5.
Ibid., pp. 19-29.
Robert L. Berg (ed.), Health Status Indexes (Chicago: Hospital Research
and Educational Trust, 1973~.
Paul B. Ginsburg, "Impact of the Economic Stabilization Program on
Hospitals: An Analysis with Aggregate Data," in Michael Zubkoff, Ira
E. Raskin, and Ruth S. Hanft (eds.), Hospital Cost Containment:
Selected Notes for Furture Policy (New York:
293-323.
Provist, 1978), pp.
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43
9
10
Fred T. Bellinger, "An Empirical Analysis of Several Prospective
Reimbursement Systems," in Zubkoff, et. al., op" cit., pp. 370-40Q
David Se Salkever and Thomas W. Bice, "Certificate-of-Need Legislation
and Hospital Costs," in Zubkoff, et" al, Ope cit., pp. 401-428 e
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
personal health
