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Assignment:  This assignment has two parts: an essay and a business plan.

Describe positive and negative aspects of abandoning traditional healthcare strategic

 

Describe positive and negative aspects of abandoning traditional healthcare

PART I – develop an essay to address the following information:

• Reflect on the mission, vision, values, and goals of your healthcare organization and provide examples of how individual employees, departments, and work units support all four of these as a foundation for directional strategies.

• Describe positive and negative aspects of abandoning traditional healthcare strategic planning processes and adopting a contemporary approach.
• How does complexity influence budget strategies and their implementation? Give examples.

• Discuss the process of external and internal environmental analyses, and then speculate on scenarios that may result if these steps in strategic planning are omitted or are not done well.
• Discuss mechanisms that nurse manager can use to ensure they make the best decisions for supporting the financial goals of the organization.

• Identify an opportunity for implementing a new service or a cost-reducing idea in your organization and write a business plan to describe your idea: explain the need (why) for it, identify stakeholders (who) will be impacted, discuss the benefits versus the disadvantages, describe the costs/expenses for the idea, and outline the implementation plan.

Expert Answer and Explanation

PART 1: Strategic Healthcare Management

Planning is a concept that is used every day in our personal lives and the same behavior also translates into the management of organizations.  The top leadership of organizations usually formulate strategies to meet the mission and vision of their organization. It is important because with every organizational activity, risk and resources are usually involved and they have to be adequately managed lest the organization loses its ability to function properly. The purpose of this paper will be to expound on different aspects concerning the application of strategic management practices in healthcare.

Support for Mission Vision, Values, and Goals

The organization is usually driven by its mission, vision, values, and goals formulated. The efforts of all individuals and organs functioning within the organization should be aligned to realize the accomplishment of these elements. A mission statement is one that highlights where the organization is going (Cronin & Bolon, 2018). For example, the mission for the healthcare facility I work for is “to provide quality and compassionate healthcare accessible to everyone.”

Vision on the other hand is the future position of where the organization wants to be, while the values are the beliefs and practices uphold by the organization (Lahey & Nelson, 2020). The values for the organization I work for include teamwork, integrity, excellence, innovation, and compassion. Our goals are aligned to meet the said mission and vision of the organization while using our core values during our transactions with other stakeholders.

The role of individual employees, departments, and work units in accomplishing this mission is to ensure that they channel all their efforts into fulfilling this mission. This includes identifying and removing any barriers that may hinder collaboration or promote conflicts due to differences in personal goals and objectives (Lahey & Nelson, 2020).

It is also the role of individual employees and work teams to collect information on behalf of the organization on what other competing organizations are doing to accomplish goals employees can also support all the four elements by ensuring that they align how they discharge their duties with the values of the organization.

Impact of Adopting a Contemporary Approach to Strategic Planning

Strategic planning was developed due to the increased complexity of how the economy and organizations operate (Esfahani et al., 2018). The used traditional approach was a systematic process that emphasized on the mission and vision of the organization without considering other factors as equally important.

The processes also involved coming up with the short term, medium, and long-term objectives, which were to be followed to the latter to gain a competitive edge. However, this approach had its drawbacks which made it be abandoned for a contemporary approach that was considered to be more responsive to the current business environment (Grube & Crnkovich, 2017).

One of the positive aspects of abandoning the traditional approach to strategic management and transitioning to the contemporary approach is that a more responsive process that factors in day to day operational issues is considered. This means that organizations can easily make adjustments to their strategic decisions based on the current changes in operations.

Another positive aspect of adopting a contemporary approach is that it treats strategic planning as a process and not an event (Grube & Crnkovich, 2017). This means that it is continuous and adjustable to changes in both the internal and external organization environment. The negative aspect is that the contemporary approach does not offer a predictable methodology or timeframe to strategic planning as it was with the traditional approach.

Budget Strategies

The current environment in the management of healthcare organizations has become more and more complex with increasing risks and stakeholders to transact with. This has also made healthcare financial managers restructure their methods to adjust to these complexities; this includes the budget-making process and implementation. One of the complexities has been the adoption of the contemporary approach to strategic planning that requires adjustment of organizational strategies with changes in the internal and external business environments (Walsh, 2016).

Given that these adjustments can be abrupt, it becomes difficult to forecast and give accurate budgetary figures in an environment of uncertainty (Hill, 2016). Another factor is the addition of more stakeholders involved in decision making. This means that more data needs to be collected to make accurate budgetary forecasts which can also be time-consuming (Hill, 2016). As such, there is also a likelihood that the budget implementation timelines will also be affected.

Process of External and Internal Environmental Analyses

In the strategic management process, one of the core steps is to carry out an internal and external organization analysis. This allows the organization to collect its efforts in response to the findings of the two analyses. The process of carrying out environmental analysis is a five-step process that includes; first an analysis of the external environment (Esfahani et al., 2018). This involves evaluating the political social, economic, legal, environmental, and technological factors that may affect the organization and its processes.

The next step is to analyze the industry and organization’s competitors, including how they operate, what they are doing differently, and what can be learned from them. The third step is to establish any external factors that can pose a threat to the organization, for example, a new product developed by the competitor, and opportunities that can be capitalized by the organization, for example, the adoption of new technology.

After doing so, an analysis of the internal organizational strengths and weaknesses needs to be undertaken, and finally noting down the collected information and establishing the need for strategic action (Esfahani et al., 2018)

If these steps are omitted in the strategic planning process, the organization is likely to formulate strategies that are not helpful in the accomplishment of its goals and the needs of its stakeholders. A scenario example is when an external analysis is omitted, this means that the organization may develop strategies that fail to adhere to the current industry regulations, which will mean that the organization’s operations have a risk of being conducted illegally.

Mechanisms a Nurse Manager Can Use to Make Best Decisions

Nurse managers are supposed to make sound decisions that are going to be in line with the goals of the organization, including financial goals. Some of the mechanisms which can be adopted to assist in doing so include the following. One of the mechanisms is the adoption of a lean thinking approach to decision-making. This is a quality management technique that involves creating processes that have as minimal waste as possible but at the same time making sure that the quality of services is retained at optimum (Magalhães et al., 2016).

By using this approach, a nurse manager can improve the efficiency of resource utilization through waste reduction. Another mechanism is by application of knowledge management systems. These are systems that collect information from the organization which in turn facilitates proper decisions to be made (Tretiakov et al., 2017). Using this approach, resources will only be used in those areas where they are needed based on the collected data.

Conclusion

This paper has highlighted different aspects concerning strategic management and planning. It has been established that the aspect of strategic planning has changed with the process becoming more dynamic and as a result complex. The complexities have in turn affected organizational processes such as budgeting which need to be factored in to successfully manage the organization. Using the collected information, one can learn how to adjust to ensure successful management of the organization.

References

Cronin, C. E., & Bolon, D. S. (2018). Comparing hospital mission statement content in a changing healthcare field. Hospital topics, 96(1), 28-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/00185868.2017.1366188

Esfahani, P., Mosadeghrad, A. M., & Akbarisari, A. (2018). The success of strategic planning in health care organizations of Iran. International journal of health care quality assurance. Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 563-574. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHCQA-08-2017-0145

Grube, M., & Crnkovich, P. (2017). giving a consumer focus to strategic planning: Having a strong consumer focus has become a fundamental organizational competency in today’s US healthcare system. Healthcare Financial Management, 71(11), 44-51. Retrieved from: https://www.hfma.org/topics/article/56575.html

Hill, L. E. (2016). Pioneering a rolling forecast: a North Carolina health system that switched from a traditional to a rolling budget process found the conversion offered a unique perspective of its financial picture. Healthcare Financial Management, 70(11), 58. Retrieved From https://www.stratadecision.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Pioneering-a-Rolling-Forecast_HFM.pdf

Lahey, T., & Nelson, W. (2020). A Dashboard to Improve the Alignment of Healthcare Organization Decision-making to Core Values and Mission Statement. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 29(1), 156-162. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180119000884

Magalhães, A. L. P., Erdmann, A. L., Silva, E. L. D., & Santos, J. L. G. D. (2016). Lean thinking in health and nursing: an integrative literature review. Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem, 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1518-8345.0979.2734

Tretiakov, A., Whiddett, D., & Hunter, I. (2017). Knowledge management systems success in healthcare: Leadership matters. International journal of medical informatics, 97, 331-340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2016.11.004

Walsh K. (2016). Managing a Budget in Healthcare Professional Education. Annals of medical and health sciences research, 6(2), 71–73. https://doi.org/10.4103/2141-9248.181841

PART II: Business Plan

One of the steps in business strategy development is the identification of problem areas or gaps that can be improved to enhance the efficiency of the quality of services rendered. Prudent leaders will always seek to continuously improve their organizations to respond to changes in the environment and ensure that the efficiency of processes is enhanced and this includes cost-efficiency. The purpose of this paper will be to give an elaborate business plan of a quality improvement initiative that will reduce organizational costs through the reduction of unnecessary paperwork.

Rationale for the Idea

One of the expenses the organization faces includes the amount spent on stationery, more so papers. The health care facility still uses a manual system of documentation which is considered not only inefficient in terms of costs but also time. Similarly, the manual system of documentation is also prone to errors where nurses or other care providers can fail to capture important pieces of information from patients (Whitley et al., 2018).

That is why this business plan will propose the adoption of an Electronic Health Recording system which is will eliminate a substantial amount of paperwork, thereby reducing costs, documentation errors and also enhance efficiency in the collection of patient information.

Impacted Stakeholders

There are going to be several stakeholders who are going to be affected by the change idea. One of them being the health care personnel who are going to use the system. They will be affected because the new system will require them to be technologically adept given that the manual reporting system will be abolished.

As such they will have to receive new training to gain the skillset required to utilize the implemented system. Another affected stakeholder is the patient who is going to enjoy improved services due to increased efficiency and accuracy brought as a result of adopting the new EHR system. The organization leadership is also going to be affected, given that they may be required to hire new informaticists to assist in the management of the new system.

Benefits Versus the Disadvantages

The application of the EHR system has been widely appraised for its numerous advantages. According to Barrett and Stephens (2017), the use of EHR has been hailed to reduce the workload faced by healthcare professionals by simplifying the collection and retrieval of patient information. When compared to the manual system, the electronic-based system will allow care providers to process many patients within a short period. The electronic recording system will also reduce the number of errors that are common in the manual system (Whitley et al., 2018).

EHR systems are more precise and accurate as compared to the manual recording system which in turn has a positive impact on the outcomes of patients served. The electronic system is also more secure and less prone to tampering or destruction of documents/information. The cost-benefit of this system is that it only needs to be procured once and can be reused for a very long time without incurring any expenses to maintain if properly used (Yee et al., 2020). The approach also has minimal wastes in the form of used papers, and save a lot of space in terms of storage, as compared to the bulky filing system currently used.

In terms of disadvantages, the EHR system requires a substantial amount of initial capital to implement which can be a burden to the organization (Yee et al., 2020). The system will also require skilled personnel to operate which the organization may currently not have, thus requiring more resources to train them to facilitate proper usage (Barrett, 2018).

The electronic-based system also comes with security challenges, including internal and external hacking of the system or corruption of the data by malicious software. That being the case, the system still possesses more advantages when compared to the manual system and should therefore be considered for adoption.

Costs for the Idea

Implementing the new EHR system will require a substantial amount of initial investment but in the long run, the project will reap great benefits for the organization, which far outweighs the cost implications (Yee et al., 2020). One of the expenses that will be incurred from the project is the expense required to procure the EHR equipment. This will take the biggest chunk of the incurred expenses. Another expense will be the cost required to train the care personnel who will use the EHR system.

Given that the facility will be transitioning to a completely new platform, then the healthcare personnel will have to be trained to properly utilize it. Another cost implication is the expense required to hire new informaticians who will facilitate the implementation and maintenance of the new system. The last cost implication involves putting the correct security systems in place to prevent any external attack that may expose the system.

Implementation Plan

The implementation of the new system will use the PDCA model which involves planning (Chen et al., 2020), that is identifying the required resources needed and the stakeholders involved in the implementation of the new system. The second step is doing which involves the actual implementation of the system. The third step is checking whether there are any issues that hinder the system from functioning as it should and lastly acting to eliminate any of those issues which have been identified.

Conclusion

This paper has identified a suitable business plan that will assist the organization save on costs and improve the quality and efficiency in terms of service provision. The cost-benefit analysis indicates that the idea is viable and will prove beneficial in the long-run to the organization and its stakeholders.

References

Barrett, A. K. (2018). Electronic health record (EHR) organizational change: explaining resistance through profession, organizational experience, and EHR communication quality. Health communication, 33(4), 496-506. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2016.1278506

Barrett, A. K., & Stephens, K. K. (2017). Making electronic health records (EHRs) work: Informal talk and workarounds in healthcare organizations. Health Communication, 32(8), 1004-1013. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2016.1196422

Chen, Y., Zheng, J., Wu, D., Zhang, Y., & Lin, Y. (2020). Application of the PDCA cycle for standardized nursing management in a COVID-19 intensive care unit. Annals of Palliative Medicine, 9(3), 1198-1205. DOI: 10.21037/apm-20-1084

Whitley, P., Ennis, E., Taaca, N., Sneha, S., Shahriar, H., & Zhang, C. (2018). Reduction of Medical Errors in Emergency Medical Care. In Proceedings of the 19th Annual SIG Conference on Information Technology Education (pp. 160-160). https://doi.org/10.1145/3241815.3241884

Yee, S. W. Y., Gutierrez, C., Park, C. N., Lee, D., & Lee, S. (2020). Big Data: Its Implications on Healthcare and Future Steps. In Impacts of Information Technology on Patient Care and Empowerment (pp. 82-99). IGI Global. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-0047-7.ch005