  Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore possible factors impacting
team performance in healthcare, by focusing on information exchange within and
across hospital's boundaries. Design/methodology/approach: Through a web-survey
and group interviews, the authors collected data on the communication networks
of 31 members of four interdisciplinary healthcare teams involved in a system
redesign initiative within a large US children's hospital. The authors mapped
their internal and external social networks based on management advice,
technical support and knowledge dissemination within and across departments,
studying interaction patterns that involved more than 700 actors. The authors
then compared team performance and social network metrics such as degree,
closeness and betweenness centrality, and computed cross ties and constraint
levels for each team. Findings: The results indicate that highly effective
teams were more inwardly focused and less connected to outside members.
Moreover, highly recognized teams communicated frequently but, overall, less
intensely than the others. Originality/value: Mapping knowledge flows and
balancing internal focus and outward connectivity of interdisciplinary teams
may help healthcare decision makers in their attempt to achieve high value for
patients, families and employees.
