Healthcare management principles and practices

¶ … 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).

Staffing

Staffing is the responsibility of the healthcare facility's human resources or personnel department in coordination with the chief, cardiology department as depicted in Figure 1 above. Typically, a cardiology department will be staffed by physicians, technicians nursing staff and administrative support staff (Wynne-Jones 17).

Directing or actuating

This function is the responsibility of the chief, cardiology department.

Controlling

The controlling function is performed by the chief, cardiology department following the mission statement and organizational goals of the tertiary healthcare facility.

Operational Plan for Departmental Effectiveness

There are five general steps to the strategic planning process to ensure cardiology departmental effectiveness as follows.

1. "Planning to plan."

2. In-depth assessment of organization's current circumstances and conditions including data gathering and trend analyses.

3. Restatement of the organization's mission and core values.

4. Development of specific objectives and identification and plans for obtaining requisite resources to achieve organizational goals.

5. Implementation of the plan, typically on a year-by-year basis, using quantifiable measures to gauge the effectiveness of the plan over time (Liebler and McConnell 200).

Following the development of a viable "plan to plan," the next step as noted above is to identify departmental strengths and weaknesses. These assessments are presented below based on comparable assessments of a tertiary healthcare facility cardiology department.

Strengths

1. Medical center's strengths in general

2. Medical center's strength in cardiology in particular

3. Medical center's location

4. Triage as a distinctive competence

5. Callback plan

6. Two or more physicians on duty most of the time

7. Total years of experience

8. Physicians training in nonemergency physicians' groups (Friesen and Johnson 149).

Weaknesses

1. Have not fully capitalized on cardiology department's strengths

2. Efforts to seek industrial medicine patients

3. No response to fast track

4. Lack of development of home-based care treatment center

5. Understanding of how to expand our effective market area

6. Understanding of which medical center strengths to exploit

7. No marketing to medical staff

8. Limited interaction with medical staff (Friesen and Johnson 149).

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.