¶ … administrative assistant to the CEO of Faith Hospital is to help the CEO map out a plan to deal with diverse pressures on the hospitals, which include falling revenue and a staff that makes life-and-death decisions based on personal ethics rather than established standards at the hospital. Chris's first assignment as AA to the CEO is to gather information for the CEO so the CEO can begin to lead all of the hospital staff to a solution of their problems. KEY PROBLEMS/ISSUES

Faith Hospital has several problems, many or all of which are related to a lack of specific guidelines for staff to follow when more than one choice of plan appears to be the right one, depending on the person's personal ethics. The only written guidelines the hospital has is their mission statement, which is far too vague to serve as operational rules. With no operational rules in place, individuals within the hospital make varying decisions, even though those decisions can have profound legal or fiscal consequences for the hospital.

Fiscally, the hospital has some high fixed costs without a fixed income. Their income comes from patients, and patient numbers have dropped recently. The hospital has also had outside agencies attempting to influence hospital policy: Child Protective Services is looking at some of their medical pediatric practices. All of the issues raised in Chris's meeting with the CEO are related to ethical dilemmas, with each person or agency deciding independently what is the right and best action to take in a medical crisis.

ANALYSIS/EVALUATION

The decision-makers at Faith Hospital appear to look to their mission statement for answers, but the mission statement is too broad and all-encompassing to be applicable in individual patient decisions. Mission statements are not intended to act as a set of guidelines for day-to-day actions.

In addition, hospitals compete for customers just as any other business does. Even not-for-profit organizations have to have enough money to remain operational. Patients...

While the mission statement is not the problem, it can be a starting point. Now they have to decide how the hospital will act when presented with medical crises.
The hospital must set specific goals and objectives that address both the hospital's mission and financial needs. They cannot fulfill their mission if they have to scale back services to the point that it affects patients negatively. Their goals and objectives must include strategies for drawing patients to Faith instead of some other hospital to make sure they do not encounter fiscal problems that would result from declining numbers of patients.

The goals and objectives will then have to be followed by specific plans of action. For instance, it will not be enough to set a goal to restore former patient levels to previous highs in one year or to increase patient levels by another 10% by the end of the following year. Such goals will have to be supported by specific plans designed to accomplish the goals and likely to do so.

Right now neither the new Administrative Assistant nor the CEO could write such goals. The hospital has employees with markedly diverse views on important questions, and clearly they are people with high ethical standards. If an abstract goal is simply dictated to them from hospital administration they will still feel compelled to act ethically, and since views on ethics vary, they will still have a hospital with a patchwork quilt of responses to standard hospital dilemmas.

The hospital's difficulties fall into several categories including legal, ethical, fiscal, human resources, and public relations. Chris should first talk individually and face-to-face with the heads of each of these departments. he/she should take his own list of questions, and in addition find out what the concerns of these individuals are. Chris should…