Organizational Communication

Interview Overview -- Management in Health Care

For the purposes of this assignment, I interviewed an individual at a local hospital, to ask them, from a management perspective, what the challenges were in the present health care industry. Overall, when assured of confidentiality, the individual responded to me that health care presents some of the most difficult emotional and practical challenges, from a management perspective, for any management-level administrator. One of the most difficult organizational communication challenges is negotiating the completely different perspectives of the health care professionals in the arena of care, such as the doctors and nurses, with individuals at the hospital primarily concerned with cutting costs and fulfilling administrative, rather than care giving functions.

However, even doctors, nurses, and other practitioners primarily concerned with care can be at odds amongst themselves. In today's cost-cutting environment, nurses are often called upon to perform the tasks of doctors. This can cause anger on the part of the doctors, and also anger on the part of the nurses who believe that their diagnostic and treatment capabilities are not accorded enough respect. Also, physician's assistants are increasingly asked to fulfill the functions of nurses, which causes organizational conflict, as well as the fact that physician assistants are asked to perform, quite often, the tasks of aids, despite their job description. Mediation and an adequate counseling and human resource staff has provided some relief.

Additional challenges for staff members relate to the increasingly arcane referral system at local hospitals, which are often misunderstood by both patients and caregivers. It is often tempting for individuals responsible for the financial management of the hospital to sacrifice care, to preserve budgetary needs and constraints, and it is often tempting for physicians and nurses to attempt to circumvent the hospital protocols of insurance referrals, in the interest of preserving the best care for patients, but putting the hospital at financial and legal risk. Communication between different arms of the hospital is essential in meeting these challenges. Frequent staff meetings to keep doctors and nurses abreast of the often arcane language of the insurance industry, and of the budgetary and public relations state of the hospital is just as necessary as keeping other budgetary and administrative members aware of the changes and challenges in the health care field.