Regulatory accreditation standards and performance management across healthcare organizations

Organizational Performance Management

Emergency Medical Services & Pharmacies Long-Term Health Care Physicians' Offices Hospitals This paper written organizations. • Discuss influence regulatory accreditation standards performance-management systems.

Organizational performance management

The main purpose for the health care industry is to serve patients in the most effective, safe, and efficient manner. Each organization in this industry functions differently. However, there are some functions and regulations that the organizations will share. These regulations provide the organizations with a path that they are supposed to follow. Regulatory requirements mandate the organization to compliance, and provide a standard performance level that creates the need for the organization to have specialized accreditation and monitoring in order to have quality improvements at various levels Sciences, 2006.

The key component for ensuring that an organization maintains its course in meeting the standards, compliance, maintaining the organization's mission and vision, and meeting regulatory requirements is communication. Risk management will be used for the supervision of safety functions while quality management will be used for the supervision of customer satisfaction in the services offered.

Similarities and differences

There are some differences and similarities in the organizations chosen. Emergency medical services will provide initial care for emergency cases. These services are mostly provided in ambulances or at the scene of accident. Their main goal of to ensure the patient receives necessary care before they reach a medical facility. Long-term health care provides care to patients who are totally unable to care for themselves. The physician's office will mainly handle specialized medical care like eye specialist. The physician's office will not handle any other services apart from the ones they have specialized in. Hospitals on the other hand, will handle all manner of cases, from inpatient to outpatient, long-term and short-term care. The main similarity if these organizations is that they are all geared towards provision of care to patients, and they all try to attend to the patients in the least amount of time possible Healy & Dugdale, 2010()

Medical payments will range depending on the type of organization that a patient visits. The main options are health insurance cover, cash, medicare, and medicaid.

Decision making process

To ensure that an organization achieves its performance objectives, there is need for a continuous improvement in provision of care to patients and discipline across the entire organization. A good performance program will apply to all areas of the organization, well planned, systematic, continuous, objectively measures quality, follows the organization's mission, and improves existing processes Katz & Green, 1997()

The organization's staff will need to be educated for an effective risk management program Kavaler & Spiegel, 2003.

This will provide the necessary foundation for effectively reducing and managing risks. The main objective of a risk management program is positively influencing quality of patient care through feedback. Having such feedback, the organization's staff will coordinate with the risk management personnel in planning and providing programs that are current and relevant to the other staff members while using the most effective presentation method.

The regulatory and accreditation agencies play an important role in the facilitation and promotion of quality health care. The main purpose for any these organizations are to provide high quality, safe patient care, which is matched by the organization's commitment and readiness for accreditation and regulatory surveys. There are many regulations that are put in place in these organizations. These regulations assist in risk and quality management. The compliance with these regulations allows an organization to meet its risk and quality management. Failure to comply with state or federal regulations would result in a poor risk management because the organization will be faced with penalties and fines. The organization can also be sued by patients for negligence, which would result in a poor quality management score Briner, Kessler, Pfeiffer, Wehner, & Manser, 2010.

It should be noted that risk and quality management go hand in hand. Quality management ensures that patients are well taken care of as they receive good treatment. For the four organizations, the regulations assist the organizations in ensuring they provide high quality care, reduce malpractices, reduce waiting times, and lower patient costs.

Majority of organizations are always searching for better ways they can use to improve their patients satisfaction levels. They will use surveys, assessments, and benchmarks. This would result in changes in how patients are attended to, keeping patient records and charts, and reducing the waiting times especially in the ER. This is all part of quality management, but risk management does benefit as well. Proper management of risk and quality would result in improved organizational performance Carroll & Management, 2010.

As the organization's environment is changing for good, risk and quality management will allow it to meet more of its goals and the organization would be better placed to achieve its mission. The failure to manage risk would result in the organization facing financial challenges as patients would not be visiting the facility. Controlling of unnecessary expenses is what risk management is mainly concerned with, which means that if the health care organization is facing law suits it would result in employee reduction. This would have a negative impact on the organization's performance. Quality management is concerned with leadership development, team work, and patient satisfaction. If a health care facility is able to satisfy many patients, these patients will always return to the facility, and they will inform their close friends and relatives.

Each organization in the health care industry has its own unique functions. These functions may be overlapping which would demonstrate similarities. Processes that monitor performance assist in the cultivation of performance in order to improve quality and compliance with regulatory requirements Walburg, 2006.

These performances will assist an organization to achieve the necessary accreditation and improve its overall performance.

Leadership communication

There is need for proper communication to ensure that an organization is able to align its goals. The main goal for all health care organizations is eliminate unnecessary death and reduce disability of patients. Having a clearly communicated mission will allow the staff to participate fully in the organizations endeavors. This would increase the organizations receptiveness to its stakeholders and would develop a stronger and more unified organization. Leadership will act as the champion for the stakeholders in order to earn the stakeholders respect and trust, which would increase the organizations integrity and operations Coleman et al.()

Proper communication would also ensure that all employees are aware of what needs to be done to ensure that they improve their performance Bryan, 2009.

This improvement should be in line with the requisite regulations and accreditation bodies. By ensuring that an organization adheres to its regulatory obligations, the management of the various organizations will be improving their organizations overall performance. All organizations are required to ensure that the patient records are private and only accessible by authorized personnel. Ensuring that such regulations are observed would result in improved quality management, which in turn reduces risks that the organization would face.

Managers and supervisors are vital in ensuring that the services provided to patients are effective and cost efficient. Leadership would be charged with information analysis, process development, human resource development, and strategic planning. To properly gauge an organization's performance, leaders will have to collect data that they will use in making strategic decisions. The leaders will then have to ensure that their employees are well informed in regards to what the data actually means, and advise the employees on how to interpret the results. The goal for this process is maximizing patient care.

When the employees are involved in the processes that are currently taking place within the organization, it would allow for an easy buy-in by the employees. This is because they will readily understand and accept the changes been proposed. As they understand what the organization is intending to achieve, it would be quire easier for the employees to follow their leaders. Proper understanding of regulations and accreditations would also ensure that employees avoid some mistakes that could cost the hospital dearly. The regulations should be shortened, and employees provided with handbooks that they can carry for referencing when they are faced with any dilemma. The regulations can also be placed strategically on walls for the employees to read when they pass by the hall ways.

The organization should also develop a model that encourages employee collaboration. Having a model that encourages employee input would ensure that the employees participate actively in the leadership of the organization. Data collected from the various systems should be analyzed by teams that comprise of managers and employees. There should be regular meeting where the attendees can learn about what the others have succeeded in or failed. This sharing of information will allow for a participative leadership. Good communication will also ensure that the employees and leaders understand each other. There should be open communication so that employees do not feel intimated to speak. Intimidation would result in less communication, which would not benefit the organization.

Conclusion

An organization's performance is based mainly on quality of service provided. When the service provided is good the organization's rating will increase, which would result in good quality management and risk management. Failure to manage the quality of services provided would not only result in bad risk management, but can also lead to penalties and fines been imposed on the organization. In worse cases, the hospital can also be sued by a patient for failure to provide quality care. Therefore, if an organization intends to manage its performance it is vital that it also addresses quality and risk management. This is because risk and quality management are directly related to performance management. The systems that the organization will be using for performance management should also be compliant with state and federal regulations. This will ensure that the organization manages its regulation well and within the confines specified.