Healthcare Administration Hospital Management

Healthcare management often entails resolving communications crises and disputes. For a hospital to operate efficiently and effectively, the organization needs to cultivate and maintain harmonious relationships between governance, medical staff, administrative staff, and boards of trustees. Often it seems like these disparate stakeholders are pulling in opposite directions, but nothing could be farther from the truth. When all members of the organization are on the same page, they can work together to achieve common goals. Often the job for the administrator is to discover the common ground between disparate members of the organization and work hard to ameliorate tension.
The factors that can contribute to tension between members of the organization often have to do with finances and/or budget allocations. Medical staff pushes for the latest tools, technologies, and interventions that can help patients, but the hospital may be facing a budgetary crisis. Yet financial disputes come down to differential philosophies or different interpretations of the hospital’s mission. What the healthcare institution’s official mission statement says, and what it actually does to promote that mission, are often two different things. There could be conflicts of interest when administrative staff or members of the board form strategic alliances with community organizations or partners in the private sector.
Tension also arises with regards to how to interpret emerging healthcare policies and laws, and integrate new policies into organizational practice. For example, navigating tricky new healthcare insurance provisions can be a major source of tension for hospitals (Sultz & Young, 2011, p. 202). Ethical concerns often plague members of the healthcare organization torn between public health objectives and personal health outcomes for patients (Sultz & Young, 2011, p. 328). An effective leader aims to resolve tensions through conscientious communication and collaboration. Listening to different parties air their grievances and concerns will help all stakeholders work together as a team rather than wasting valuable resources fighting an internal war.
Organizations like the Leap Frog Group help empower consumers to make the right healthcare choices for their families. These services use survey methodologies to assess quality of care, and then make the results of the surveys available to the public. While these services promote freedom of information, and prove valuable for healthcare consumers, they also challenge healthcare leaders and hospital administrators to do better.
Using the Leap Frog Group’s survey results, patients can read about the services or issues that mean most to them and choose a hospital accordingly. This information is instructive, although it may be misleading because of the way surveys are conducted, the sample sizes, and the inability of many members of the general public to read between the lines. While some patients are information literate and understand how statistics can be misleading, many are not and can be easily seduced by the quick information and the visual charts that aid in their decisions. The same can be said for crowdsourced medicine or any use of technology to assist with healthcare choices. The public is ready to have information like that provided by the Leap Frog Group, but this information should also come with helpful advice for how to be more information literate.
Healthcare managers and administrators should also use these surveys as guides for how to steer their staff and resources in the right direction. If patients are choosing hospitals for certain features, those features should become top priorities for next year’s budget. Consultation with healthcare marketers can also help reposition the institution in ways that are more attractive to consumers. Overall, survey data is extremely useful to patients seeking the best quality healthcare for their money.
Competition is usually good for businesses, encouraging all to do better and improve quality. This is as true in healthcare as in any other sector. Therefore, the establishment of independent competitor services by physicians can be construed as beneficial for hospitals as well as patients. Hospitals need to learn to capitalize on these opportunities, while patients need to learn how to discern between the different types of services offered by different providers. As Sullivan (2013) points out, insurance considerations may factor into a patient’s decision to opt for a free-standing diagnostic or treatment center versus a hospital.
Specialized services provided by free-standing outpatient clinics can help hospitals to reduce costs by partnering with these organizations, essentially outsourcing some services in a more cost-effective manner. Doing this could potentially liberate resources in the hospital, which then provides better overall quality of care to other patients in the institution. Many patients do not need the specialized services offered at the independent clinics or specialty hospitals; those who do can receive the specialized care without necessarily abandoning the primary care physicians or institutions.
From a patient perspective, the main disadvantage from these developments would be cost-related. If insurance providers are unwilling to change their modeling, then patients may not be covered for physician services outside of the hospital. The only other potential drawback would be continuity of care, as some of these specialists might not be digitally integrated with the hospital network, leading to potential medication errors or barriers sharing information between other members of a healthcare team.





References

Sullivan, E. J. (2013). Effective leadership and management in nursing (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Sultz, H. A., & Young, K. A. (2011). Health care USA: Understanding its organization and delivery (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Jones & Bartlett.