Professional blog

Applications in Healthcare Management and Strategy: Capstone Project

Healthcare Management Capstone 

A 1. Identify one of the following healthcare management opportunities you encountered in one of the previous performance assessments completed in this program:

Healthcare management opportunities arise as a process of applying new healthcare strategies, therefore, I encountered ‘’ that enhanced improved healthcare experiences in my assessment. This placed me in the position of Change Manager at a hospital in an urban town as I was on my assessments. The change manager’s role was to Implement a new team-based model of healthcare that was fully composed of all members in healthcare and highlight patients as first in the list of priorities.

• Identify one of the following professional lenses:

In this task of Capstone, I choose the ‘Manager professional Lenses’ and this will be focused as the change manager.

• Summarize the opportunity selected in part A1 from the perspective of the professional lens selected in part A2.

Being in the position of a change manager, I shall recommend the implementation of the team composing of multidiscipline persons and direct them towards a new team-based care model to deliver improved healthcare services. This team will consist of various representatives in various disciplines actively coordinating to participate in each profession, they will not be overlapped such that patient care is improved. The use of a multidisciplinary team for change guides the hospital to achieve its objective of attaining improved patient care that meets the demands of the hospital population.

• Provide a process overview by doing the following:
• Describe the process as it is being performed today.

Previously, the hospital got 25 professional physicians in practice, and the aim of this is to uplift the preadmission and post discharges in the primary care for patients. The practice is also too focused on satisfying the hospital population’s health demands and this requires the health facility to multiply the reimbursed measures. The practice was begun by 10 physicians 25 years ago but now it’s on the hospital implementation. Due to the predetermined culture of the practice’s origin, the practice also reflects the organizational culture in its structure. The fore founders of the practice are the topmost followed by professionally employed physicians and other healthcare staff such as the medical assistants and nurses and lastly the non-medical and subordinate staff in the hospital.

i. Describe the operational environment.

Various facets are included in the operations of the practice that composes of the fore founders, of the practice are the topmost followed by professionally employed physicians and other healthcare staff such as the medical assistants and nurses and lastly the non-medical and subordinate staff in the hospital who are also stakeholders and should be educated, thoroughly trained and shadowed in the whole practice, patients are also part of the shareholders of the practice because they have invested in the practice whenever they are able. Organization success entirely depends on teamwork (Powell et al., 2019) and specifically when new practices are being implemented in the healthcare facility and these are compounded by workgroups and the operational environment of the practice. Patients’ experience is the team’s desire and these are implemented by the executive management’s team share to see the practice successful in preadmissions and post discharges in primary healthcare. Actively participating team involves corporation of stakeholders in helping the healthcare facility align its goals to successful new practice for the benefit of the patient.

ii. Outline the sequence of events of the process.

The top management of the hospital observes complex and essential activities and prioritizes them according to the urgency and need basis. Conscious decisions are vital in this point since what to be done and not to be done is the best way to avoid exhaustion and detachments of the team professionals. Participants in this practice comprise the hospital executive and the hospital staff as a whole, the executive has specific responsibilities as well as employees in the practice. Stakeholders oversee and embrace the acquisition of the healthcare management strategy while the management commits to actively supporting partnerships with visible engagements of the stakeholders.

iii. Describe the constraints of the process.

Every new practice like innovations comes with constraints that affect the acquisition and maintenance of the practice (Li et al., 2018). Stress is one of the constraints that may arise in the process, followed by cultural differences and lastly the financial difficulties. The fore founder physicians may face substantial stress, cultural and financial difficulties in executing the practices to its effectiveness. The fore founders managed the practice for over 25 years and currently, they will be under direct observation of the hospital administration and leadership. This can lead to salary cut downs or unfavorable paybacks which are most likely to stress the fore founders of the practice. Culture and its associated impacts may cause challenges in adjusting to new organizations’ structure (Wensing et al., 2020) since the first owners are not responsible for daily operations and the hospital business needs to adapt to the new operations. The owners may have the stress of not being able to make management decisions and this could accumulate tension and hostile work relationships for them as employees can result to work resistance as they may be directed by the physicians concerned. The owners would envy a positive outlook on the practice acquisition and provide their knowledge in the merit of change implementation but this may be very challenging to the hospital administration since they are the sole leadership executives in the program.

Hospital employees are exposed to similar stresses as the owners, the new work structure of the practice may be intimidating and each physician will provide different experiences and skills that can be implemented as the change takes place. Maintaining an integrated communication system between the teams, employees and the physicians will be an essential task within the hospital during this implementation stage of the practice. Nurses and the medical assistants may face the challenge of communication chains with their new hospital physician since they had been incorporated by the culture of the owners and these may greatly affect the non-clinical staff members as well. All these constraints can be overcome by effective communication. Provision of positive support to the entire hospital team will be a measure that will reassure confidence in task implementation. Employee physicians may be prone to fear of job security and substantial potential losses that may be incurred during the acquisition process, there may be negative salary advice, potential layoffs, and other personal feeling uncertainties that may cause stress to the staff as a whole.  The nurses and nonmedical staff may share similar stress to the medical assistants who may be experiencing fear of job losses and income cut-downs. Therefore, it will be very essential for the hospital executive management to include representatives of all staff levels in implementing the change to prevent the anxiety of frustration and rather motivate them for efficient practice outcomes.

• Describe the risk factors of the process.

The implementation of the new health management strategy has various risks associated with its acquisition (Wensing et al., 2020) and these may include resistance from the shareholders, complicated implementation guidelines, and failure to exploit obstacles in the process. The acquisition can only be successful when all the stakeholders are in open communication, this encourages participatory feedbacks on the progress and enhances reliable innovation of reliable solutions to any anticipated obstacles in the process. Implementing guidelines are very vital in embracing the understandings of the stakeholders in the process during acquisition. During the implementation process guidelines, these shareholders may face discoveries of obstacles, these will be essential in overcoming constraints and embrace positive considerations towards the new healthcare management strategy.

• Propose a process that addresses the constraints and risk factors identified in part A4 a. iii. and part A4 a. iv. by doing the following:
• Describe the proposed process that addresses the constraints and risk factors identified in part A4. a. iii and part A4. a. iv.
• Outline the sequence of events of the new process.

The team is led by a physician-assisted by the nurses, medical staff, and the non-medical staff employees then the patients. I recommend that a second team be piloted to include two member representatives from each hospital employee department, this will be easy to share positively the constraints and act as a booster to free expressions that will avoid intimidations as for the case of a single-member representative. The pilot team should be providing feedback to the main change team on the progress of the team-based model practice in healthcare management strategy practice as this will act as an influential agent of change in the hospital. The anticipated challenges will result in brainstorming sessions that ensure the innovative generation of ideas between the two teams. The pilot team is to maintain an open-minded suggestion to the main team’s progress for the most efficient patient care in the hospital. Continued discussions in cases of constraints will enhance timely response to challenges and thus the pilot team’s significance in the strategy.

1. ii. Identify potential constraints of the new process.

The establishment of a new multidisciplinary team requires more time for development, for the case that requires multiple stakeholders like healthcare management strategies can have delayed change plans due to differences in team participants’ backgrounds. Idealistic opinions are not always welcome in such teams and tension can easily develop within the team members. These disagreements and tension can potentially harm the implementation of change for team-based models and cause ineffective team-building skills that diminish healthcare experiences. The purpose of a multidisciplinary team is to create a successful change implementation plan in the hospital, therefore, to overcome the constraints and negative impacts of the team, the team must utilize fully professional skills in practice. The team may be unable to foresee the need for future preparedness in case of uncertainties, therefore leading to ineffectiveness in providing healthcare change to the hospital.

iii. Identify potential risk factors of the new process.

Potential risk factors in this new change strategy are inclusive of reversing problems, ineffective change, lack of adequate support from the hospital administration, culture resistance, and ineffective communication systems where the intended change may not be effective as planned in the beginning. The planning phase during the implementation process does not always guarantee 100% efficiency, therefore, the creation of contingency plans is vital and can help generate change in the management team for unexpected uncertainties. Managing change has to incorporate rollback solutions that reset quality before the implementation phase. These rollback solutions are time-consuming and can cost the team substantial time to evidence the positive impact of the change from the healthcare management strategy model.

• Discuss how this new process impacts its external environment.

Failure to provide support and healthy relationships in a change implementation can cause a team’s failure in change management, employees may be highly demotivated and frustrated with tensional leaders in the new change implementation. The healthcare facility is at risk of staff resignation leading to short-staffed management and the general healthcare assistants. Stressful employees may turn to hard-control fellows due to insufficient care for the patients resulting from the change management implementation model. This will affect greatly the multispecialty services and thus the hospital is not able to reach its intended acquisition goals.

A proper and efficient communication system by all participants of the strategy and the multidisciplinary alterations enhances understanding and reaps benefits for a team-based model of healthcare service delivery. The change will ultimately pose visions for the future and align the hospital business plans with stakeholder’s expectations. Detailed explanations will facilitate stakeholder’s understanding of the whole process and hence a successful model change in the hospital.

• Stakeholders engagement strategy

Engagements of all parties concerned in the change process will positively impact the overall model by providing a conducive work environment for the team to execute their mandate thus reaping positive effects of the change.

• Change and impact readiness strategy

An outline of this strategy provides the basis for directions on how to proceed with the planned change management, this will be guided by the implementation responsibilities assigned to each employee in terms of roles, the scope of work analysis of readiness for implementing the change. Workplace for implementing change explains possible impacts of a management decision to the stakeholders, it states procedures to be followed, tools to be used, and job descriptions for each member as well as the technology applicable for the new team-based management model. These reassure successful outcomes to the stakeholders before the execution process.

• Learn and development strategy

Leaning is a continuous process in healthcare and therefore, the development of a hospital’s new multidisciplinary service breaks the challenge and begins the acquisition process. This will require proper initiation of trained staff and adequacy in handling patients at all levels, the hospital employee team will need to get adequate support staff to boost the operational deliveries as well as patient care. The hospital administration and management shall provide efficient work tools to the nurses, proper training of the medical and non-medical staff in building confidence as they deliver quality services to embrace the change.

• Measurement and benefits realization strategy

Timely communication of the benefits retrieved from the strategy will enhance and facilitate the evaluation of whether the implementation plans are on the right track as planned and this will allow space for adjustments as the process continues for a better chance in the hospital.

• Identify all stakeholders and their roles.

There are several individuals associated with this acquisition and they include, the founders/owners, employed or contracted physicians, nurses medical and non-medical staff as well as the front office staff. The founders/owners started the change management program in the healthcare facility 25 years ago as supported it as their initial idea, they are currently the top supervisors of the operations and take control of the overall process at the healthcare facility. The contracted physicians and the medical assistants are responsible for medical practices at the hospital while the non-medical staff performs storekeeping duties, transport functions as well as maintenance. Front officers are responsible for administrative work such as patient registration, discharge recording, human resource functions, and management tasks as assigned by their superiors.

• Describe any new technology solutions.

Utilization of the new EHR system will be embraced by the implementation of the strategy at the hospital. New electronic health system tools will be provided for effective technological compliance to the new changes, software installation shall be done to the new hardware to facilitate smooth flow of activities within the healthcare facility. The medical record specialists will evaluate the system and offer feedback to the management for adoption where the effective EHR will be implemented and incorporated to all the hospital staff and patients.

iii. Describe any training impacts.

Unknown misinterpretation of desired changes may face repellant from employees who may not understand the need for training. There is more likely for most of the workforce to agree to the training since they may believe not participating in the training can cost them jobs. For scenarios where the workforce doesn’t understand the need for change implementation, they may reject training and they can negatively affect the process of acquisition.

• Describe any operational considerations.

Provision of support and training for new skills will be highly considered important for all staff in the healthcare facility to enhance functional work routines. Change can be associate with discomfort where a change of accommodation locations is involved, therefore, frustration and exhaustion of employees shall be dealt with to avoid such burnouts in the hospital.

• Identify all potential costs of implementation (both monetary and non-monetary).

Manageable costs related to the implementation of the multidisciplinary change team in the acquisition phase are minimal since most of the team’s activities will be taking place during prescribed working hours for all hospital staff, thus no need for additional monetary budgets for the implementation. Training sessions that will be offered on rotational schedules and timelines will be provided during the acquisition phase and therefore, increased overtime for employees will be an advantage to their leisure since no such time will be consumed by the implementation.

• Describe how you would deploy the strategy from part A6.

Communication and training are the basic starting points before the implementation of the change initiates, this will allow time for all stakeholders to decide their participation and make conclusive decisions regarding the process. Effective demonstrations led by examples from the management will be versioned to motivate employees to align their goals to the change before taking off to the implementation phase.

• Illustrate a phased implementation of the strategy

Chart showing how the healthcare management strategy will be executed.

• Discuss how to collaborate with the stakeholders identified in part A6. a. i. about the implementation of the proposed strategy.

Collaboration with stakeholders identified will involve interconnections and supportive demonstrations of intelligence. To positively relate with the stakeholders, there will be more example-led traits from the management that will enlighten the employees on the requirements for the change strategy. Effective communication will be vital in collaborating with these stakeholders. Inspirational remittance will be adopted to positively engage all employees and represent teams with honest communication throughout the process.

To measure, monitor, and control the performance of the process I would implant a new model that uses sustainable plan models such as gathering feedback from stakeholders and using the feedbacks to clarify the change agenda and upgrade communication systems. Performance data would be collected by a team of sponsors who are the measuring agents of performance. Monitoring of timelines will be the adequate version for controlling the process, this will create correction actions for tasks that are not aligning with the implementation plan. According to McCarthy, Eastman, & Garets, (2021) transiting back to the former standards of operation can threaten the efficiency of the proposed model goals, and thus the plan for improved preadmission and post-discharge procedures will be adjusted according to the feedback obtained from the stakeholders such as employees and the patients.

The use of collective methods in research is advisable for any study that needs to obtain precise and efficient results, therefore I would use mixed-method in collecting performance data, subsequently, I use both qualitative and quantitative methods for accurate and reliable results. The strength of one measure can be used against the weakness of the other and the reverse to confirm the authenticity of the data which will help in the successful implementation of the change strategy.

• Describe how you will analyze the information.

I would use a scale designed to range from zero to ten based on the patient’s overall experience where zero would indicate complete unsatisfactory with the implemented change while the extreme value ten would indicate the satisfaction of the patient to the change implemented. Additionally, any value that lies between zero and ten is accompanied by the rated level of satisfaction of the patient.

• Describe how you will communicate the results to stakeholders.

The results of the research to investigate the effectiveness of the change implementation strategy would be communicated through the quality and assurance department of the hospital. The hospital executive management would lead the quality assurance personnel in open communication that will deliver patient feedback regarding the strategy to all stakeholders. These can be done through open forums or through incentives to celebrate the successful change strategy implementation at the hospital facility which can be done quarterly or annually.

• Describe the resources you would need to support ongoing monitoring of your control plan.

The resources that would be required in the monitoring and control process in this change strategy are human resources and communication feedback. Analysis of the process for control requires that human efforts be directed towards certain areas to find out how effective they match the planned implementation, these need heavy human resources to be effective.