Strategic planning and management functions in a tertiary cardiology department

¶ … Functional Cardiology Department Within a Tertiary Healthcare Institution

The provision of high-quality healthcare services in a tertiary health institution is a challenging enterprise that requires careful alignment of organizational resources with departmental goals. To achieve this level of alignment, most healthcare organizations use some type of master plan that provides general guidelines for the "who does what" aspects of administering healthcare delivery. This master plan may be shared with stakeholders as part of a marketing or public relations initiative (Liebler and McConnell 200). The organizational chart shown in Figure 1 below helps to place a typical cardiology department in a tertiary healthcare institution in hierarchal context.

Figure 1. Representative organizational chart for tertiary medical center with cardiology department

Source: http://www.flvh.gov.tw/english/web/01about/img/04org_pic01.gif

In many cases, the top levels of the organizational hierarchy will be occupied by a board of trustees, an executive vice president, supported by a leadership team consisting of an administrator and medical director and their assistants.

Strategic Plan for the Cardiology Department

According to Wasilewski and Motamedi, strategic planning has long been recognized as an important process for aligning organizational resources with departmental goals (229). When applied to a cardiology department, the delineation of the respective management functions that are involved is required, together with a description concerning the implementation and administration of the master plan, and these issues are discussed further below,

Application of the Management Functions within the Cardiology Department

Planning

The decision-making, organizing, staffing, directing/actuating, and controlling functions of the cardiology department in question are described below.

Decision making

In the cardiology department in question, the chief of the cardiology department reports to and collaborates with the medical director for medical decisions and to and with the administrator for administration-related decisions.

Organizing

The organizing function for the cardiology department in question is the primary responsibility of the department chief as supported by the assistant chief and cardiology program directors. The typical cardiology department is responsible for organizing high-dollar computerized imaging equipment that requires ongoing oversight (Slack and Slack 37).

Restatement of Mission Statement and Care Values

Mission Statement. This will vary from healthcare facility to healthcare facility, of course, but for the purposes of this analysis, a representative mission statement would be as follows:

We recognize the value of every person and are guided by our commitment to excellence and leadership. We demonstrate this by:

1. Providing exemplary physical, emotional and spiritual care for each of our patients and their families

2. Balancing the continued commitment to the care of the poor and those most in need with the provision of highly specialized services to a broader community

3. Building a work environment where each person is valued, respected and has an opportunity for personal and professional growth

4. Advancing excellence in health services education

5. Fostering a culture of discovery in all of our activities and supporting exemplary health sciences research

6. Strengthening our relationships with universities, colleges, other hospitals, agencies and our community

7. Demonstrating social responsibility through the just use of our resources (St. Michael's Hospital Mission Statement 1-2).

Core Values. As with the mission statement, core values will differ from facility to facility, but the representative core values stated below are illustrative of these:

All members of the Northwestern Memorial family believe in and practice these core values:

1. Patients First. We put the patient first in all we do. No matter where in the hospital we work, we remember always that caring for the individual patient and his or her family is at the heart of our mission and our philosophy.

2. Integrity. We adhere to an uncompromising code of ethics that emphasizes complete honesty, transparency and sincerity. Through our words and actions, we earn the complete trust of our patients and their families, our community and our coworkers. We seek to do the right thing, always and everywhere, in our day-to-day work and lives.

3. Excellence. We continuously strive for excellence. We never stop learning and working to improve our skills, programs and services.

4. Teamwork. We can only achieve our mission and goals by working together. Through the collective and coordinated efforts of our staff, we apply our diverse talents, backgrounds, ideas and experiences to create solutions and benefit patients. We value team success over individual success (Northwestern Memorial Hospital Core Values 2).

The next step in the formulation of the operational plan is the development of specific objectives and identification and plans for obtaining requisite resources to achieve organizational goals which are presented below.

Objectives

1. Determine ways to capitalize on the cardiology department.

2. Determine differentiation opportunities to make our department more unique and facilitate a physicians' group decision to pursue one (Friesen and Johnson 149).

Implementation

The final step in the formulation of the operational plan for effectiveness of the cardiology department in question is the implementation of the plan on a year-by-year basis, using quantifiable measures to gauge the effectiveness of the plan over time following the guidance provided by Liebler and McConnell (2011). For this purpose, the quality assurance (QA) metrics that are used by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) for cardiology services will be followed. The results of the trended analysis of these QA metrics will be used to identify areas of deficiency and opportunities for improving the delivery of high-quality cardiology services pursuant to the stated mission, core values and objectives established by the cardiology department.