Abstract
A patient who came to a hospital very sick, got treated, and nursed back to health can still sue the hospital due to poor patient satisfaction. The hospital may have resuscitated against the will of the patient, conducted an organ transplant, or made the patient feel afraid. Traditionally, the word of the physician was final, just as today, the word of the patient about personal health has become final. Further, no health care institution can survive without funds, more so in a capitalist society. All these factors make the strategic management in healthcare organizations extremely complicated and a careful balancing act. The instant research paper delves into the areas of strategic management that enable a healthcare organization to survive and thrive in such an environment. Based on the research, a good strategic plan, positive organizational culture, research and development, and finally information technology are critical elements of strategic management in this sector.
Introduction
Strategic management relates to the development and actualization of the plans and activities that enable an organization to meet its vision, mission, goals, and objectives. Traditionally, strategic management was limited to the planning aspect of running the organization. However, most modern theorists extend strategic planning into a management loop that begins with planning, covers the implementation part then returns to the drawing board for recalibration if monitoring and evaluation deem it necessary. Healthcare has undergone a major transformation in the modern times. Traditionally, the healthcare industry was dominated by physicians and the fight against diseases and ailments. Currently, it is dominated by the need for patient satisfaction and economic considerations (Ginter, Duncan & Swayne, 2018). It takes money to run any healthcare organization whether or not it is for profit. Further, the information age ensures that the patient is extremely informed about healthcare issues and consumer rights, a fact that complicates the process of treatment (Kelley et al., 2014). As this research paper reveals, strategic management in the healthcare sector is exponentially complex and entails a careful balancing act between professional and vocational ethics and pecuniary considerations.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Background Information
Organizations in the healthcare industry may vary exponentially from one another but they are all operating within the same general set of circumstances, hence their congruence when it comes to strategic planning. The organizations vary from for-profit and not for profit hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, research companies, and healthcare insurance companies (Ginter, Duncan & Swayne, 2018). Normally, all these organizations operate together in an effort to assist patients in their time of need or the general populace to improve their health. The goals of these organizations can generally be divided into three categories. The first is the value that provides the customers with what they need with regard to their healthcare. The second is the customer satisfaction goals that entails the customers being happy with the services they receive (Kelley et al., 2014). The third is to avoid legal liability, which can prove debilitating for organizations in the healthcare sector.
The Strategic Plan
As with all organizations, the strategic plan is an integral aspect of strategic management within the healthcare sector. Strategic plans begin with the vision and mission of the organization (Speziale, 2015). They then expand the vision and mission into the goals of the company which are then reduced into attainable objectives. The objectives are then expanded into projects through which the organization is run and managed. Within the healthcare sector, goals include improving primary health, attaining higher levels of patient satisfaction, and making a profit in the case of private organization. Based on the nature of the organization, these goals will be reduced into objectives, such as making the best pharmaceuticals and allied equipment, hiring the most competent doctors and nurses, or creating the best healthcare insurance covers, depending on the nature of the industry (Speziale, 2015). Strategic plans in the healthcare industry must also factor in liability for litigation based on liability from the different stakeholders. The critical stakeholders include the customers, more so patients and employees (Kelley et al., 2014). Monitoring and evaluation is also an integral part of the strategic plan and strategic management.
Organizational Culture
Organizational culture entails the building blocks upon which the reputation of an organization is created and it forms an integral part of strategic management. The building blocks include interaction with internal and external stakeholders, the underlying beliefs of an organization, the assumptions that an organization makes in its strategic planning, implementation therein, and the values of the organization (Lozano, 2015). The process of strategic management includes molding these building blocks and adhering to them in the day to day running of the organization. Through this kind of management, healthcare organizations determine what the community believes about them. Organizational culture is critical to healthcare organizations because they need to be trusted by patients (Körner et al., 2015). Without trust, patients cannot seek services from a hospital or buy medication made by a company. Further patient satisfaction is inter alia dependent on the level of trust that a patient has bestowed upon a service provider in the referenced industry. Strategic management is thus crucial in the healthcare industry to the extent that it creates a positive organizational culture (Körner et al., 2015).
Research and Development
Another critical aspect of strategic management in the healthcare industry is research and development (R & D). R & D in term of healthcare can be defined as the process of seeking to continually better products and processes (Krzyzanowska, Kaplan & Sullivan, 2011). Healthcare is among the most rapidly advancing industries in the modern world. Within a period as short as a decade, many developments and advancements are made in a variety of disciplines relating to health. Pharmacological organizations are constantly seeking to create better medications for different conditions and also reduce the adverse effects of available medication. Physicians keep seeking to advance better ways of curbing different maladies while surgeons seek to develop more benign approaches of solving different health problems. In the healthcare industry, it is not just necessary to attain the best standards since those standards need to be constantly improved through R & D (Krzyzanowska, Kaplan & Sullivan, 2011).
Information Technology
Information technology is currently both a standard and critical aspect of operational infrastructure in most industries. In the healthcare industry, more so in the US hospital system, the use of information technology is legally regulated. Federal and state laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulate how patient information is to be stored, accessed, and shared (Edemekong & Haydel, 2018). From the perspective of strategic management, information technology in the healthcare industry is a careful balancing act. On the one hand, information about patients need to be readily available as and when needed to enable proper treatment. Contemporaneously, access to the same information has to be strenuously regulated to avoid breaches of confidentiality. The organizations must thus invest in systems and protocols that balance between access to information to authorized individuals and prevention of exposure (Edemekong & Haydel, 2018). The management and running of equipment and gadgets including high dependency and intensive care equipment as well as surgical machinery use IT. Strategic management in this arena entails a careful balance between advancement and cost so that the organization invests in the best possible hardware and software without crippling itself financially.
Conclusion
Strategic management is generally complicated but within the healthcare , it is more complicated than in most of the other sectors. Among the basic grounds of complication lies in the hybrid objectives of modern healthcare. It is no longer just enough for an organization to cure ailments as it also needs to satisfy the patient in the process. The fact that the modern patient is highly knowledgeable complicates the entire process. Further, money is at the center of the modern service sector including healthcare, even for not-for-profit organizations. First, these organizations need to develop a comprehensive and effective strategic plan then stick to it. Secondly, they need to create a positive organizational culture in order to garner trust from the patients. Further, the concept of optimum does not exist in the sector as organizations need to constantly work towards betterment. Finally, IT is integral to the success of healthcare organization hence needs to be factored into their strategic plans. The totality of the above will lead to a successful player in the healthcare sector.
References
Edemekong, P. F., & Haydel, M. J. (2018). Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In StatPearls [Internet] . StatPearls Publishing.
Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L. E. (2018). The strategic management of health care organizations . Hoboken: New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Kelley, J. M., Kraft-Todd, G., Schapira, L., Kossowsky, J., & Riess, H. (2014). The influence of the patient-clinician relationship on healthcare outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. PloS One , 9 (4), e94207.
Körner, M., Wirtz, M. A., Bengel, J., & Göritz, A. S. (2015). Relationship of organizational culture, teamwork and job satisfaction in interprofessional teams. BMC Health Services Research , 15 (1), 243.
Krzyzanowska, M. K., Kaplan, R., & Sullivan, R. (2011). How may clinical research improve healthcare outcomes?. Annals of oncology , 22 (Suppl_7), vii10-vii15
Lozano, R. (2015). A holistic perspective on corporate sustainability drivers. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management , 22 (1), 32-44
Speziale, G. (2015). Strategic management of a healthcare organization: engagement, behavioural indicators, and clinical performance. European Heart Journal Supplements , 17 (suppl_A), A3-A7
