Caring more by doing less: An enquiry about the impact of outsourcing on patient care

This paper presents a report dealing with the potential impact of outsourcing on health care processes. By referring to a wider scope of industries and sectors, as they have been the experimental fields of most of the studies on outsourcing, we highlight the pros and cons of the outsourcing of activities related to patient care. Although the lack of empirical evidence, this paper intend to show and contextualize the (yet) ambiguous effects of relying on external partners in delivering services which are related to the health of patients. We argue that the seek for efficiency might sometimes hinder the global outcome of care; further we state that given the peculiar nature of the healthcare, outsourcing need to be used within a wider strategic analysis of the activities and thus organizations should carefully identify the threshold for its extension.