Management in Middleville Regional Healthcare. Essay Example.

Middleville Regional Healthcare is a health facility with a bed capacity of 575 beds and serves a community of approximately 350,000 people. A population of 2000 employees work within the facility which handles various activities including 221,000 outpatient visits, 13,000 inpatient admissions, and more than 2000 births every year. Just like any other organization, Middleville Regional Health Care expects its governing board to be very active in formulating the strategies for running its operations strategy. It embraces the trend evident among other companies that have included specific responsibilities that they require the input of the governing board. Stiles & Taylor (2001) have documented some of the governing boards duties as per the strategic development. The hospitals board is charged with the responsibility of setting the ultimate path that the facility takes towards the achievement of its corporate objectives. According to Leardini, Rossi, & Moggi (2013), the governing board must review, assess, understand and approve particular initiatives. The board is also expected to evaluate and understand risks and forces linked to the organizations performance over an extended period. Just like the governing board of any company, the Middleville hospital management has several responsibilities including making strategic decisions, planning, human resource management, and controlling operations.

In the Middleville, the board has decided to hire a consulting firm to evaluate its performance in areas including human resource management, information technology, financing, and marketing. The result of this evaluation will be used to offer new strategic direction to the organization. While pressure from the management of the firm piles, the governing board embarks on creating ongoing vital roles. In the current society, most governing boards try to limit their involvement in approval of imperative monitoring and proposals of the companys strategic objectives progress (Stiles & Taylor, 2001). In most cases, they do participate only in developing the strategic direction for the companies. In the case of Middleville governing board, the facility needs to cuorrectly understand its involvement in strategy development. Their full participation in developing strategies made them to hire the consulting firm charged with the responsibility of actively and competently evaluating its strategic performance. The board cannot assess its performance since they can overlook or fail to realize some significant issues they were unable to address.

As they continue to get involved in developing strategies for the company, the governing board need to segregate and itemize various strategic activities like strategic decision making, strategic thinking, planning as well as execution. In strategic thinking, they have the responsibility of collecting, analyzing, and discussing information regarding the business model as well as the nature of competition in the health sector. Regarding strategic decision, the board is expected to make directional decisions on how Middleville should allocate its resources. Strategic planning is to identify priorities, set objectives, and allocate resources for the implementation of a selected strategic moves (Stiles & Taylor, 2001). The governing board of this organization is also charged with this responsibility to ensure proper applications of the strategic directions. Strategic execution involves the implementation and monitoring of the result what the governing board must confirm is done in an appropriate way for the progress of Middleville.

The Middleville governing board can only succeed when it is in a position to select a performance metric that is easy to monitor to enable the panel to find out if it's marketing, human resources information and technology and financing function correctly. The functionality of all these automatically determines achievement of the organization. The board should select a proper performance metric that includes all the four different areas hence adds value to the whole body. According to Leardini, Rossi, & Moggi (2013), a standard performance metric need to cover financial issues, organizational issues, operations, and the companys position in the market as well as the way it relates with its stakeholders. While choosing the best performance metric for this medical facility, the board should consider some of the factors that can add value in both long-term and short-term. It needs to find a performance that its benefits outdo the costs. In this case, the board can choose from three metric accomplishment considering all the essential factors.

Provision of quality health services to the community one way of measuring its success. They can do this by launching a new marketing strategy to increase its market share in the health sector by around 30% for the next four years. The board believes that this marketing strategy will lead to the increment in the number of patients that visit the facility. Four years down the line, Middleville should find out its shares increased by 30% and anything below that will undoubtedly assert that the company failed to provide quality services to the community. The second metric they can use is the people in the organization that ensures formulated strategies succeeds. The board should implement policies that guarantee employees income is reviewed after every one year for the next four years. By doing this, they will retain their experienced personnel hence resulting in quality services to the community. The best way to prevent losing the best workers in the company is through motivation. It can be measured by either increasing number of personnel or constant qualified workers that should associate with an increased number of patient visits, beds, and births after four years.

Compared to its competitors, Brierfield and Greystone, Middleville occupies the top position in the market in all areas except in admission and expenses. Maintaining its market share may not be easy following the financial situation the organization is at the moment. The governing board should develop strategies that can help the facility maintain its position in the market. One thing they should consider is how they can increase admissions as well as expenses while maximizing the profits. It is not an easy task to achieve this what gives the board a heavy duty to ensure the hospital maintain its competitive market share and at the same time provide proper healthcare to the community. First, they should consider rigorous marketing of their services to make it known within the community. The increased popularity of its services would lead to increase in admission. In the 21st century, technology advancement has gone higher. Therefore, implementation of an Information Technology system that can be used for storage of patients records, financial records, as well as admissions can help them maintain their position (Cutler, 2007). For instance, they consider implementing an Electronic Health Records system for storing accurate data of the patients. Availability and easy accessibility of the data will ensure the patients are served within a short time by the right personnel. With such services, many patients would visit Middleville hence increased admissions. Use of modern computers will also help the company to record and store financial data as well as maintenance of its inventories. With that, the firm will be able to keep its accurate economic data as well as updated stocks hence avoiding unnecessary expenses and reduce costs leading to massive profits.

For Middleville to compete positively in the current market, implementation of advanced technology system should be the primary objective. Digitalization has gone higher and using the most current technology in your businesses the only way out. Regardless of all that, the organization must consider the cost-benefit of any technology before implementation. The governing board must choose the most cost-effective gadget that will bring the significant company benefit (Leardini, Rossi, & Moggi, 2013). They should ensure that the company is conversant with the cost of Electronic Medical Records and other health data systems before the project commences. ERM comes with several benefits to Middleville like helping physicians in keeping specific patients data for easy retrieval on their next visits. It will also decrease cases of duplicating diagnostic test hence reduced expenses. Implementation of an Electronic Medical Records and associated health data systems will include also improve the quality of health services at Middleville healthcare. Despite all the benefits it comes with, the company should be ready to incur the cost that comes with it (Cutler, 2007). The value includes both equipment and training costs, but proper implementation will earn the company substantial profits hence compensating all the charges.

For the company to retain its employees, efficient motivation strategies should be put in place. One way of motivating the workers is through good salaries depending on the nature of the job done by the employees. Most employers ignore the issue of employ satisfaction hence costing them some of their best workers (Hickey & Bennett, 2012). Middleville has failed to retain most of the nurses with qualifications following the economic constraints it faces. At this point, human resources have the duty of promoting employees satisfaction. It should provide growth opportunities to the workers to enforce their goal setting efforts like providing them with enough job challenges to enable them to expand their knowledge. Without motivation, the workers can do preliminary work hence poor quality services to the clients (Hickey & Bennett, 2012). In the health sector, workers require satisfaction even more since they majorly deal with peoples lives. Minus motivation, nurses may also mess to the extent of losing lives what may lead to the closure of the facility. Human resources should build credibility among the employees through communication. The manager should allow the workers to air their concerns, listen to them and then appropriately address the issues (Hickey & Bennett, 2012). Following the current financial crisis at Middleville, the organization can only retain their experienced workers and promote their satisfaction by making them feel valued.

Boards have some primary roles including making policies, decision-making, and oversight of the organization's activities (Stiles & Taylor, 2001). The leading board plays a vital role in the progress of the company. They ensure effective implementation of the policies what enables them to achieve decision making as well as oversight of organization activities (Stiles & Taylor, 2001). Whenever the policies are written well, it guarantees the proper functioning of the board members as well as other members of the staff. In the case of Middleville healthcare, the board has to ensure that it meets its vision, mission as well as the set objectives. The organization currently faces financial challenges what has cost it most of the experienced personnel in the company. The governing board has the mandate to help the company out by developing proper directional strategies.

References

Cutler, D. (2007). The Lifetime Costs and Benefits of Medical Technology. doi:10.3386/w13478

Hickey, A., & Bennett, S. E. (2012). Canadian public service employee satisfaction and its main drivers. Canadian Public Administration, 55(1), 5-23. doi:10.1111/j.1754-7121.2012.00203.x

Leardini, C., Rossi, G., & Moggi, S. (2013). Governance Roles and Responsibilities. Board Governance in Bank Foundations, 29-50. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-41306-3_3

Stiles, P., & Taylor, B. (2001). Boards at...