Does hub-and-spoke organization of healthcare system promote workers’ satisfaction?

The healthcare services network is a recent organizational structure of healthcare services that are interdependent and organized as a network on the basis of the Hub-and-Spoke model. This questionnaire-based study analyzed socio-psychological well-being of health workers both in terms of team-related experience and individual satisfaction and engagement with one's work in a Hub-and-Spoke healthcare service in comparison to non-network healthcare service. Workers from two different public healthcare services involved in the treatment of the same skeletal rare diseases participated in the Study. We expected that working under a Hub-and-Spoke healthcare service-involving teamwork and cooperation among different healthcare services within the units, as well as among workers belonging to different units-would lead to greater psychological team-related and individual benefits. In line with predictions, the findings showed that under a Hub-and-Spoke healthcare service, health workers felt highly interdependent by their team fellows and developed shared cognitions (i.e., team mental models) about their integration and their tasks to a higher extent than non-network ones. They were also individually more satisfied of their job and displayed higher work engagement than non-network workers. Beneficial team-related dynamics, such as perceived interdependence, were responsible for the differences between the Hub-and-Spoke workers and non-network ones. The implications of the present findings were discussed in terms of promotion of health workers' satisfaction and well-being.