Increasing the effectiveness of resource deployment in healthcare organizations

This article suggests ways to enhance the effectiveness with which healthcare organizations deploy their resources. Specifically, the article: (1) reviews research findings from the academic literature that managers often continue, or even increase, resource allocation to unprofitable courses of action; (2) reports the results of a case study with hospital administrations that suggests that this tendency may exist in healthcare organizations; and (3) suggests ways for healthcare organizations to control the occurrence of such suboptimal actions, thereby increasing the effectiveness and timeliness of their resource deployment.     

A synergy of values. Catholic healthcare leaders must implement their organization's mission and model its values

Catholic organizations need to select, develop, and retain healthcare leaders who dedicate themselves to carrying on the Church's healing ministry and the work begun by those who have preceded them. Persons entrusted to carry on Jesus' healing mission perform their duties out of a sense of commitment to the ministry and a love for the persons with whom they work and whom they serve. They recognize a synergy between their own values and the values of the healthcare organizations they lead. Dedication to leadership in Catholic healthcare can be viewed from three perspectives: the Bible and selected documents of the Catholic Church; the transfer of responsibility for Catholic healthcare from religious congregations to evolving forms of sponsorship; and the implications for the selection, development, and retention of healthcare leaders, both lay and religious. Servant-leadership is an integral part of the religious tradition that underlies Catholic healthcare. As cooperation increases between healthcare providers, third-party payers, employers, and other healthcare agents. Catholic healthcare organizations are challenged to reassert a mission and values that will enable healthcare in the United States to be delivered both compassionately and competently.     

The role of quality improvement initiatives in healthcare operational environments: changes, challenges and responses

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the utilization of quality improvement initiatives in healthcare operational environments. In the process, environmental changes and strategic responses are examined for a sample of healthcare organizations. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: A survey-based research methodology is utilized in this study. Factor analysis is used to extract relevant factors representing environmental changes and strategic options relevant to healthcare organizations. In addition, simple percentages are utilized to assess the extent of implementation and effectiveness of quality improvement initiatives. FINDINGS: In general, the findings appear to indicate that the studied organizations have achieved both operational and strategic benefits due to the effective implementation of quality improvement initiatives. The implementation of quality improvement initiatives appears to be in response to environmental changes and challenges faced by healthcare organizations. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Based on the findings of this study, decision-makers are encouraged to commit organizational resources toward the effective implementation of quality improvement initiatives. Investing in quality improvement not only is justified, but also appears to be very much needed in a changing competitive environment. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This study contributes to enhancing one's practical and theoretical understanding of the competitive impact of quality improvement initiatives in different operational settings.     

Advancing the state of the art in healthcare strategic planning

A recent survey of the state of strategic planning among healthcare organizations indicates that planners and executives believe that healthcare strategic planning practices are effective and provide the appropriate focus and direction for their organizations. When compared to strategic planning practices employed outside of the healthcare field, however, most healthcare strategic planning processes have not evolved to the more advanced, state-of-the-art levels of planning being used successfully outside of healthcare. While organizations that operate in stable markets may be able to survive using basic strategic planning practices, the volatile healthcare market demands that providers be nimble competitors with advanced, ongoing planning processes that drive growth and organizational effectiveness. What should healthcare organizations do to increase the rigor and sophistication of their strategic planning practices? This article identifies ten current healthcare strategic planning best practices and recommends five additional innovative approaches from pathbreaking companies outside of healthcare that have used advanced strategic planning practices to attain high levels of organizational success.     

Spirituality and effective leadership in healthcare: is there a connection?

Does the level of a leader's spirituality affect his or her effectiveness as a leader? The existence or nonexistence of a link between leadership and spirituality is an emerging issue in the healthcare leadership and management literature. This article defines effective leadership and spirituality and reviews the literature for both healthcare and other organizations in the discussion of this link. It concludes that healthcare leaders who are more developed in terms of their actualized spirituality simultaneously implement the five practices of effective leaders: challenge the process, inspire a shared vision, enable others to act, model the way, and encourage the heart. Moreover, they achieve more positive results for their organizations.     

The great divide: social media's role in bridging healthcare's generational shift

Social media, a resource largely untapped in the healthcare field, presents opportunities and advantages and, if used properly, can innovate healthcare and create a competitive advantage for adopters. Many organizations have considered social media but dismissed its advantages as fleeting products of the new generation entering the workforce: the millennials. However, the millennial generation has assumed a greater presence in clinical and administrative positions as the baby boomer generation prepares for retirement. This article advocates the adoption of social media in healthcare organizations as a strategic advantage in connecting with their patient population and recruiting and retaining millennial staff amid the generational shift of the healthcare workforce.     

Creating equitable healthcare quality and safety for children with intellectual disability in hospital

Children with intellectual disability are susceptible to poor experiences of care and treatment outcomes, and this may compound existing health inequities. Evidence to date indicates three priority areas that must be addressed in order to reduce these inequities in the safety and quality of care for children with intellectual disability. Firstly, we need reliable methods to identify children with intellectual disability so that healthcare organizations understand their needs. Secondly, we need to develop quality metrics that can assess care quality and unwarranted care variation for children with intellectual disability in hospital. Finally, for a comprehensive understanding of the safety and quality of care for these children, and how to improve, it is critical that healthcare organizations partner with parents/carers and enable children with intellectual disability to voice their experiences of care. Children with intellectual disability have higher healthcare utilization than their peers; yet, their voice is rarely sought to optimize the safety and quality of their healthcare experience. Patient experience narratives enhance our understanding of the genesis of adverse events. By addressing these priorities, children with intellectual disability will be identified, and health services will measure and understand the problematic and beneficial variations in care delivery and can then effectively partner with children and their parents/carers to address the inequities in care quality and create safer healthcare.     

Applying the balanced scorecard in healthcare provider organizations

Several innovative healthcare executives have recently introduced a new business strategy implementation tool: the Balanced Scorecard. The scorecard's measurement and management system provides the following potential benefits to healthcare organizations: It aligns the organization around a more market-oriented, customer-focused strategy It facilitates, monitors, and assesses the implementation of the strategy It provides a communication and collaboration mechanism It assigns accountability for performance at all levels of the organization It provides continual feedback on the strategy and promotes adjustments to marketplace and regulatory changes. We surveyed executives in nine provider organizations that were implementing the Balanced Scorecard. We asked about the following issues relating to its implementation and effect: 1. The role of the Balanced Scorecard in relation to a well-defined vision, mission, and strategy 2. The motivation for adopting the Balanced Scorecard 3. The difference between the Balanced Scorecard and other measurement systems 4. The process followed to develop and implement the Balanced Scorecard 5. The challenges and barriers during the development and implementation process 6. The benefits gained by the organization from adoption and use. The executives reported that the Balanced Scorecard strategy implementation and performance management tool could be successfully applied in the healthcare sector, enabling organizations to improve their competitive market positioning, financial results, and customer satisfaction. This article concludes with guidelines for other healthcare provider organizations to capture the benefits of the Balanced Scorecard performance management system.     

Promoting Resident Autonomy to Maintain Quality of Life

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian governments and healthcare organizations implemented restrictions on continuing care residents. From an ethical lens, governments and healthcare organizations were focused on preventing harm through promoting beneficence and non-maleficence; however, this was at the expense of resident autonomy. The rights of continuing care residents were stripped away when they were not given the opportunity to make informed decisions regarding their care and day-to-day life. Governments and healthcare organizations denied them the dignity to experience the positive outcomes that result from risk-taking based on their personal values and preferences. In an attempt to prevent resident harm from COVID-19 cases and deaths, governments and continuing care facilities forced residents into isolation. This negatively affected residents’ quality of life in the form of physical, mental, and cognitive health deterioration. Moving forward, governments and healthcare organizations need to take the time to engage residents in decision-making and policy development that affects their care, treatment, and support system. Governments and healthcare organizations must promote and safeguard resident autonomy to maintain quality of life.     

Fast changes for tough times: employee suggestion programs

In the midst of the current marketplace's turmoil, healthcare organizations (HCOs) lack two critical commodities: time and money. Today, time and money are all that stand between many HCOs current operations and their demise at the hands of healthcare reform; therefore, healthcare administrators cannot afford to spend either frivolously. Consultants have put forth an array of employee incentive programs designed to address cost containment and market positioning goals of various institutions. Many of these programs are well packaged and can be considered "politically correct" in terms of current philosophies on employee-management relations. However, many programs focus on long-term goals and strategies and, therefore, are most appropriate for organizations not in immediate danger of demise. One long-term program espoused and implemented widely by organizations is the employee suggestion system. This article looks at employee suggestion programs.     

Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome training from a union perspective.

The authors developed a union sponsored 2-day human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) "train the trainer" program for healthcare workers in the San Francisco Bay Area. The program incorporated the "education for action" approach in an effort to respond to the inadequacies in many traditional, institutional trainings. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP) conducted the HIV/AIDS "train the trainer" program for approximately 100 healthcare workers in county public hospitals and community health clinics. After completing the program, these workers went back to their healthcare facilities, or community organizations, and led additional classes on HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention for approximately 600 more people. The goal of the program was to empower healthcare workers to: 1) identify the occupational risks associated with exposure to blood and potentially infectious body fluids at the workplace; 2) develop strategies to reduce those risks; 3) discuss their feelings about caring for an HIV/AIDS patient; and, 4) conduct HIV/AIDS workshops at the workplace.     

Succeeding beyond the Year 2000: how to rise to the challenges of the new millennium. Interview by Jill L. Sherer.

Are you ready to take your organization into the 21st century? Do you fully grasp the implications of current and emerging trends in the field? Healthcare Executive talked with six healthcare experts and asked them what they saw as the greatest challenge for both executives and their organizations in the new millennium. Although the experts' opinions vary, their responses emphasize the importance of repairing old relationships and building new partnerships between those working in healthcare organizations, as well as bringing a consumer focus back to healthcare delivery.     

The challenges ahead for accountable care organizations (ACOs)

Although offering financial incentives to both physicians and healthcare organizations, accountable care organizations (ACOs) are designed to not only offer quality patient care, but keep costs down as well. The law states that an ACO must manage all of the healthcare needs for a minimum of 3 years for at least 5000 Medicare beneficiaries. In January 2012, the first round of applications for the ACO Shared Savings Program were accepted. Practices and insurers have already begun setting up and announcing plans to create ACOs. By making providers equally responsible for their respective patients while giving financial incentives to avoid unnecessary procedures, ACOs aim to raise the quality of patient care. However, there are growing questions and concerns with the start date approaching. For instance, will the insurers, doctors, or hospitals be in charge? What are the legal concerns? How will patient care change? To listen to the full panel discussion visit: http://www.ajmc.com/panel-discussions/accountable-care-organizations.     

Implications of Organizational Ethics to Healthcare

Organizational ethics is an emerging field concerned with the study and practice of the ethical behaviour of organizations. For effective application to healthcare settings, we argue that organizational ethics requires attention to organizations' special characteristics combined with tools borrowed from the fields of business ethics and bioethics. We identify and discuss several implications of this burgeoning field to healthcare organizations, showing how organizational ethics can facilitate policy making, accountability, self-evaluation, and patient and business perspectives. In our conclusion, we suggest an action plan for healthcare organizations to help them respond appropriately to their ethical responsibilities.     

Four strategies for recruitment and retention.

The combined pressures of a shrinking work force, an aging population, changing social attitudes toward work, financial constraints, and public perception of healthcare have contributed to a growing personnel problem for healthcare organizations across the country. In fact, decreasing job satisfaction among healthcare employees has them headed for the doors in search of nonhospital jobs that can offer flexible hours, more opportunities, equal or better pay, and less stress. Without sufficient numbers of personnel, healthcare organizations will not be able to meet the needs of their communities. And the need for healthcare services will continue to grow as the Baby Boomers age.     

Teaching organization theory for healthcare management: three applied learning methods

Organization theory (OT) provides a way of seeing, describing, analyzing, understanding, and improving organizations based on patterns of organizational design and behavior (Daft 2004). It gives managers models, principles, and methods with which to diagnose and fix organization structure, design, and process problems. Health care organizations (HCOs) face serious problems such as fatal medical errors, harmful treatment delays, misuse of scarce nurses, costly inefficiency, and service failures. Some of health care managers' most critical work involves designing and structuring their organizations so their missions, visions, and goals can be achieved-and in some cases so their organizations can survive. Thus, it is imperative that graduate healthcare management programs develop effective approaches for teaching OT to students who will manage HCOs. Guided by principles of education, three applied teaching/learning activities/assignments were created to teach OT in a graduate healthcare management program. These educationalmethods develop students' competency with OT applied to HCOs. The teaching techniques in this article may be useful to faculty teaching graduate courses in organization theory and related subjects such as leadership, quality, and operation management.     

A new health system and its quality agenda

This article reviews recent work on healthcare quality, highlights findings and recommendations of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports on medical errors and quality, and describes response to the reports to date. In it, Detmer, chair of the IOM's Board of Health Care Services and a member of its Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, identifies implications of the reports for healthcare delivery organizations and professionals and outlines ways organizations and professionals can improve the six dimensions of patient quality defined by the IOM. Sustained efforts at the point of care and in policy development are needed to overcome cultural inertia, realign incentives, support innovation, and address technical and human resource issues. Success requires that healthcare executives embrace the goal of transforming the healthcare sector into a true system and provide leadership for their organizations and communities in this most fundamental of challenges for twenty-first century healthcare.     

Five constants of information technology adoption in healthcare

The healthcare industry has developed a dependence on information technology (IT) for maintaining and improving both clinical and business operations. Whether IT is used for office automation or for reducing medical errors, there are five constants that routinely influence the successful integration of IT in healthcare. These constants are the proper use and maintenance of the IT budget, the role of supportive leadership, the use of project management, the process of implementation, and the significance of end user involvement. These constants challenge healthcare organizations to efficiently and effectively use their financial and human resources when adopting new IT. These constants also shape how the healthcare industry approaches the adoption and utilization of new IT. A collective understanding of these constants and their interrelationships will enable healthcare organizations to better integrate new IT and achieve organizational goals of developing a solid technological infrastructure to truly enhance the delivery of quality healthcare.     

The Internet and hospital marketing strategy: a survey

This project, which was conducted in the U.S. using a large number of healthcare organizations, is an attempt to discover if we can find any evidence of the impact of marketing theories on the real world of healthcare organizations. This paper addresses three major themes: Do healthcare organizations have an Internet strategy? Are they using the Internet in a strategic fashion? Can we identify any difference among the sectors concerning the strategic use of the Internet? Finally, implications for further research and health care practices are highlighted as well.     

Driving the quality transformation: what's missing?

Around the country, healthcare providers are using the tools of continuous improvement to redesign patient care, match customer needs with available resources, and make management decisions based on data-driven analyses of key processes. Initiatives such as these are producing positive changes within healthcare organizations, but two serious barriers all but preclude improvement at the system level: a compensation process that punishes innovation and the emergence of integrated care systems that lack a common vision. Unless these barriers can be removed, insists the author, healthcare providers ultimately will be unsuccessful in their effort to improve value for their customers.