Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the current research on hospital continuous improvement projects (CIPs) from an author characteristics' perspective. This work addresses the following questions: who are the predominant research authors in hospital CIPs? To what extent are the research communities collaborating in distinct research groups? How internationalized has hospital CIPs research become with respect to author location? Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review was conducted, identifying 302 academic publications related to hospital CIPs. Publications were analyzed using: author, quantity, diversity, collaboration, and impact. Findings Hospital CIPs are increasingly attracting new scholars each year. Based on the authors' analysis, authors publishing in this area can be described as a relatively new international community given the countries represented. Originality/value This paper describes the current hospital CIP research by assessing author characteristics. Future work should examine additional attributes to characterize maturity such as how new knowledge is being created and to what extent new knowledge is being disseminated to practitioners.
Keywords: Emerging field; Hospital; Improvement project; Lean Six Sigma; Six Sigma; Systematic literature review.