A CASE OF UNHEALTHY HOSPITAL

A CASE OF UNHEALTHY HOSPITAL

A CASE OF UNHEALTHY HOSPITAL

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What are the challenges facing Bruce Reid in improving the quality of healthcare and recovering the financial health? Bruce Reid is facing a challenging task of improving the quality of healthcare and recovering the financial health of Blake Memorial hospital. As the chief executive officer, Bruce came to the hospital because he needed a challenging situation to work on and achieve the best of results. He has the options of doing away with the six offsite clinics in order to avoid diverting the money used to maintain these clinics from the hospital’s in-house services. However, this would be against the initial intention of setting up the hospital which was tom serve the poor neighborhood of East Marksville because the clinics were set up as a way of taking healthcare services closer to the people. As it turns out, Blake memorial hospital services are of a poor quality. The hospital’s board was very sensitive to the slipping quality levels and would therefore appreciate any attempts by Bruce to improve the quality. Cutting on the number of staff and trying to maintain the same ratio of fulltime employees and the hospital beds as in the Bruce’s previous hospital would lower the quality. However, it is a good idea for Bruce to implement a Health Management Information System (HMIS) which will ensure that even with the cutting down on the number of fulltime employees Blake memorial can still maintain its current quality of medical care with the potential of improving with time as the system is put to effective use (Kadrie 2006). According to Carlson (2009), the World Health Organization has it that Health Management Information system could bring many benefits to the hospital. Through the system, those who make key decisions would be able to detect and control endemic and arising health problems while promoting equity and attaining other set health goals. The system will also help in empowering the community with timely health related information while driving improvements in the quality of services offered by the hospital. It will also strengthen the base on which health policies are formulated while enabling innovation by the staff in charge. Bruce should therefore present a proposal to the hospital’s board to implement a health Management Information system due to its enormous potential to solve most of the current hospital’s problems. In presenting his plan to the board, Bruce should keep in mind the fact that an effective strategy requires that he understands the real as opposed to the perceived environment and will be focused along three dimensions: Variety of the service offered, the needs of the patients from East Marksville and the access to the services by the patients (Young & Ballarin 2006). According to McKay (2001), long range planning is the concept of visualizing what an organization should look like in a specified period of time. Bruce Reid should adopt the concept of long range planning and come up with a plan to transform the hospital within a specified period of time, say three to five years. He would then use the multi-year objectives to describe what the hospital should achieve then develop tasks, timelines and programs for achieving the objectives. Such objectives should include improving the quality of healthcare, reducing the number of full time employees in the hospital, equipping the hospital appropriately and implementing a fully functional Health Management information system. With strategic management concepts Bruce Reid will help move the reforms of the hospital through various stages in the policy making process. According to Scribner (2010), frameworks from the policy stages will help determine the current step in the policy process and therefore identify the tasks needed to be done next. Bruce should consider each stage from the strategic perspective balancing the looking in, looking out and the looking ahead issues appropriately in order to put the hospital in a desirable look especially with regard to provision of quality services to the East Marksville population. In this case, the long term steps will be tailored towards ensuring delivery of better equipment and services both at the offsite clinics and within the four walls of the main Blake hospital. Bruce Reid should establish a good and clever working relationship with the Commissioner of Health services in Marksville, Clara Bryant and the director of clinics at the Blake hospital Dr. Susan Russell. Their approach to the issues facing Blake Hospital is right since they promote the intentions of the hospital to deliver services to the low income residents of East Marksville. Should he take the step to close the clinics, Bryant would influence the city hall to cut down further on funding to Blake hospital which would be devastating for the hospital at this point since it needs the funding (Elbanna et al 2009). Russell’s idea that the hospital should maintain its responsibility to the Marksville community is sensible and actually sees to it that the hospital maintains its initial mandate of serving the low income neighborhood. By focusing on upgrading the facilities first, the hospital will inspire confidence to its services by the community and therefore attract the paying public who would therefore generate revenue for the hospital and enable it to focus on upgrading even more facilities. Among the most needed facilities that may be acquired by the hospital is a knowledge management system. According to Abidi (2001), healthcare has been evolving over the years and is now an enterprise with sophisticated information and knowledge resources. Currently, knowledge is considered a high value resource and in it is embedded the capacity for action. Management of the information would capture experimental knowledge within the hospital’s operations and project to the practice of healthcare and delivery including knowledge acquired empirically from the results of the hospital’s activities. Since the inpatient referrals from the clinics had indicated a rise in the past few years, the hospital is indicating a positive sign and potential and this would rise even more if some of the important facilities can be upgraded to slightly higher standards than they are in currently. Bruce can liaise with Bryant to seek for funding from the local town council and as much as it is rumored that there is a plan to cut on the funding on the hospital by the council, Bryant may convince them on the urgency of the need and therefore the council could treat the case as an emergency. Bruce should also keenly consider the advice given by the various experts. Dan Pellegrini points out that the hospital’s viability in the long run is at risk. As much as there are many immediate issues to address such as operating deficit, Dan sees the most important factor being the direction the hospital will take when viewed on a long term basis. The board should put much emphasis on the future of the hospital which will assist Bruce in the formulation of decisions, both programmed and non-programmed. Programmed decisions are the well structured routine and supervisory decisions that are predetermined using appropriate rules of decision making while the non-programmed decisions are the ones that arise from unstructured situations and would need customized responses. They are mainly for the top management organs (Hassan 2009). Even then, Bruce should avoid presenting Dan’s idea on closing down the offsite clinics since it would attract an unfriendly response from the city council, they may even disconnect the whole funding since the clinic would not be serving the community as much as it should. He should also not heed to the idea of relocating to a more moneyed neighborhood as suggested by Dan since this would leave the residents of East Marksville with no options for healthcare. He should however take into consideration the idea that the solution to Blake’s problems lies outside of its confines in the community then tell the board to think of more innovative ways of liaising with the community to see what it can offer towards generating solutions to the problems facing Blake at the moment (Elbanna & Naguib 2008). According to Hoadley et al (2010) healthcare facilities should be adjusted to focus on the most needed services by the community. Blair and Boal (1991) suggest social transformation in the sense that members of the community whose health problems are unique so as not to conform to services offered by the hospital should be given alternative options. For instance, the city hall should consider giving aid to such patients since they are not many and can therefore be treated at St. Barnabas. Following the advice by Ellen Schall, Bruce should work together with the other hospital staff and the community consultatively to brainstorm for the most appropriate solutions since the hospital alone may not hold the solution to the current problems that are being faced by the hospital. According to the advice given to Bruce by Keith F. Safian, closing the offsite clinics and even introducing shuttle service to ferry patients to the hospital will not yield the expected results. Incase the clinic will be in such a financial problem as to warrant closure of its facilities, he should involve the community and the local council in order to deflect the negative publicity from the hospital to the community and the city hall (Langabeer & Worthington 2010). He can even advise the community to participate in fund holding in which case the healthcare provision will be led by the community and will also be patient centered (Drummond et al 2001). According to the advice given by Jane Delgado, Bruce should act decisively and swiftly to set out the goals of Blake hospital. Bruce should stay clear of any comparison with St. Barnabas since the two hospital facilities are located in two completely different neighborhoods and are therefore very different from each other in terms of the services they provide and their missions. He should therefore be specific enough to focus on the needs of the east Marksville. He should focus on creating centers for preventive healthcare for the entire metropolitan area which may turn out to be financially lucrative and politically correct. He can therefore tap on these two resources to improve the operations of the hospital (Singleton 2010). References Abidi, S. S. R. (2001). 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Strategic Decision Making in Healthcare Organizations: It’s time to get serious. International journal for Health Planning and Management. Boston, Massachusetts. Place your post now€¦€¦€¦€¦