Consolidating regional hospital systems through organizational change leadership

Organizational Development

The combined hospital system in the southeast region has been mandated to consolidate its resources and integrate the larger Metropolitan hospital with the five smaller rural hospitals. The terms of this merger has not been decided and the organizations are have been left to themselves to try to reach an agreement. If an agreement is not reached by the leadership of these organizations then a special administrator could be appointed who has the authority to decide and impose the conditions of the arrangement.

The primary problem is not each individual organization does not support the mandated integration. The smaller hospitals have voiced resistance while the larger Metropolitan hospital has said they support the move.

Root Causes

One of the primary root causes is that there are disagreements and different perceptions over funding. The smaller hospitals are all self-sufficient and are free of debt. They have achieved this through good management and fundraising. However, the larger hospital had a moderate sized accumulation of debt that the smaller hospitals viewed a symptom of mismanagement. Yet the larger hospital blames the rural hospitals of being overfunded and state that they handle more complex cases.

Jessica is a 47 hospital administrator with a stellar reputation and has been appointed as the lead in the task force to integrate the different hospitals. She faces a number of challenges although she has been identified as the most qualified to overcome these challenges. If she could not overcome the challenges and reach a deal then a provincial administrator would have to be appointed and this situation was in virtually no one's best interest. Thus everyone has a stake in compromising and helping Jessica and the task force broker a deal between the various stakeholders.

Organizational Development

The organizational change needs to occur for many reasons. It has the potential to improve efficiencies and the effectiveness of the healthcare system in general through creating quantities of scale in various business functions. One of the primary drivers of these need will be not only to improve the public services, but also that there is growing competition in the industry. Furthermore, the growing demand for healthcare services in general also demands that systems streamline their operations to be able to increase efficiency.

There will be much resistance to the upcoming organizational change. However, there are many ways in Jessica can help the organizations overcome impediments to change in human resources. The first step will be to develop a new vision for the organization. Jessica should have each of the organizations contribute as much as possible to the development of the new vision in order to maximize the buy-in from these groups.

The vision can then result in the basis for the behavioral changes that will be necessary to create a new organization. Some behavioral changes can be successful simply by motivating the employees to achieve high performances and learn new tasks. Organizational change goes beyond just a change in structures, procedures, or systems, but also a change in behavior or even a change in the norms and values that guide organizational behavior. This will evolve overtime but the different organizations will have to commit to change in order to ensure that the provisional administrator option is avoided.