Health service operational challenges and resilience strategies in “extreme” disruptive events

Purpose Configuring strategies to ensure a health service provider’s resilience when extreme disruptions occur is not simple. Optimal configuration in such circumstances is rare. Therefore, this research has relied on the dynamic capability view (DCV) to develop a decision-support framework for configuring resilience strategies that will mitigate the worst challenges and improve the performance of health service providers during “extreme” disruptive events. Design/methodology/approach The research adopted a multi-study, multi-method approach comprising interviews, quality function deployment (QFD), and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Findings The findings reveal that, during a crisis, standalone resilience strategies are not enough. To guarantee performance, healthcare services require a combination of resilience strategies and a negation of challenges. Originality/value This research extends our current knowledge of healthcare operational management by offering optimal configurations of resilience strategies to manage performance during extreme disruptions. Thus, it offers strategic insights into how health-service managers can be more resilient during a crisis.