Healthcare Management: What You Need to Know

The healthcare managers have operated in a challenging and rapidly changing as well as the fragmented healthcare system. Since 1997, healthcare sector has undergone massive transition, and a lot of changes have taken place requiring new leadership approaches. Today, the healthcare environment is even more complex with new calls for reforms and the changing workforce diversity, patients’ demands and calls for quality and safety. Compared to 1997, healthcare organizations currently have diverse workforce with a variety of cultural backgrounds. Managers currently have to improve their management skills to put up the changing workforce. At the same time, the healthcare reforms and shift from quantity to quality care put the managers at pressure to ensure that the employees provide best care for the patients. The focus on the safety of the patients requires that healthcare leaders devise new means of managing the safety of the organization. 

More complex issues continue to emerge in the healthcare sector and which managers have to be ready to deal with. Some of the areas that have experienced change are on the legislation and overall operations of the health care organizations. Legislation has had profound influence on the management and operations of the healthcare system, especially with the introduction of Affordable Care Act of 2010, which has made the nursing profession undergo fundamental changes towards the experience of the patients ( Dye, 2017). There is a shift from the cute and specialty care towards primary care. Patients have also changed, and many of them are now more aware of their rights, and most healthcare organization has been facing lawsuits for various misconducts, a move which further requires management to work towards improving quality. McDonald’s prescription for managerial actions may not be applicable currently in healthcare organizations because of more complexities that managers have to deal with while making decisions. 

Reference 

Dye, C. D. (2017). Leadership in healthcare (3 rd ed.). ACHE Management Series.