Strategic management of healthcare organizations

Health Care Management

Environmental Factors

In planning its strategic management effort, Methodist Healthcare should take into account several environmental factors. Primarily, the external environment needs to be assessed for its climate in accommodating and integrating the services provided by Methodist Healthcare. As such, any problems related to the current environment need to be eliminated. A current problem is for example that the variety of businesses and structures historically created to address specific health trends over the past decades, no longer serve this specific purpose. The diversity of these systems is too large to be effective in terms of the current, needs, vision and mission of Methodist Healthcare. This lack of focus tends to drain energy from the core business.

Environmental factors that therefore need to be taken into account to return to a more acceptable sense of focus include Market position, financial performance, managed care positioning, staff commitment, and required resources. Issues of the internal environment that need to be taken into account include the organization's mission, vision, values, goals, and strategy to reach the goals. With an integration of all these elements, Methodist Healthcare can position itself strategically in a way that both addresses the community's needs and ensures the organization's success.

2. SWOT Analysis

Internal Strengths

Internal strengths include an understanding of the importance of effective communication among branches and managers of the organization. Methodist Healthcare is a patient-focused organization, priding itself upon its excellent customer service. As such, internal communication plays a vital role in delineating the exact standards of customer service required by all associates.

In terms of infrastructure, another strength includes state of the art, standardized information technology, such as the Cerner Millennium package. The system was selected for its ability to provide solutions to most of the initiatives planned for the organization. Basically, the core strength of the organization is its focus on excellence in patient care - all other strengths lead back to this paradigm.

Internal Weaknesses

The greatest internal weakness faced by the company is in the area of its finances. While many financial analyses show favorable growth, the current revenue still does not sufficiently cover elements of strategic planning for the future. On issue included in this is the projected information system focused on helping Methodist Healthcare attain its goal of service excellence.

External Opportunities

Methodist Healthcare has historically expanded very successfully. The organization currently has successful associates in several locations, including Tennessee and Memphis. A continuing trend of consistent and clear communication in terms of vision and goal ensures good relations with these associates internally, and with patients externally. More expansion opportunities are explored and likely to be implemented successfully.

External Threats

External threats exist mainly in the form of the organizations competitors. The strongest of these is Jackson Hospital in Madison County, with a consistent market share of 46%-47%, as opposed to Methodist's share of 26.1%. Methodist's growth in terms of the market and patient numbers are encouraging in this regard. The only potential problem relates to finances, which can be handled by more careful planning and increased revenue strategies.

3. Critical Success Factors

Methodist Healthcare has modified its vision to integrate with its goal of differentiating the organization from others of its kind on not just a local scale, but also on a regional scale. As such, the vision of the organization is to develop its patient and customer care to the highest level of excellence. Customers include not only patients and their families, but also associates and physicians, who are the focus of the new vision, to create the preferred organization where physicians work to provide the most excellent of service to their customers.

Critical success factors for accomplishing these goals would therefore include a thorough analysis of customer concerns and needs, and how these integrate with the abilities and needs of physicians; a well-developed information system that can process such data; and a sound financial basis from which to support all analysis, equipment and technology needs.

4. Objectives and Strategies

In order to reach its goal of an elite location of customer care and service, the Methodist Healthcare organization has placed five primary objectives in place. The first is to distinguish Methodist Healthcare in the market place; second to create an information systems strategic plan; third to create a system by which the right place, right people, right time and right focus are aligned strategically, fourth to review finances in order to ensure funding for future projects and strategies, and finally to establish Methodist Healthcare as a learning institution focused on the education of associates.

The Care Transformation Initiative was implemented to more strongly align the objective of excellent patient care with the workplace needs of physicians. It has been mentioned above that the new vision of Methodist Healthcare focused on strengthening the institution as an excellent and desirable workplace for physicians. As such, an educational strategy has been implemented, which is focused on upgrading the knowledge and skills of physicians in the health care of patients.

Other strategies that could help in the goal of aligning the right persons for the right locations of work and care include a thorough assessment of institutional, physician and patient needs. This could be done through an IT program that matches various questionnaire responses. In this way, skills and needs can be matched for the optimal outcome in patient care.

In creating strategies for attaining goals, it is also important to focus specifically upon each goal and implement strategies to reach it. In this, any number of methods can be helpful, including IT systems, hiring experts in the field (such as finances), or conducting field research by means of for example questionnaires or interviews. As such, it is important to retain a clear focus of objectives and goals, rather than again to create a number of different entities that eventually evolve on their own without integrating.

5. Communicating the Vision

Methodist's product is the organization's primary contact with customers. As such, communicating this to the public is of vital importance. It should be emphasized that the organization strives for absolute excellence of care in terms not only of outcome, but also in terms of the customer's association with the organization. Price and promotion should be integrated during the communication process. There should be a focus on value for money, as well as the fact that customers are considered on the basis of income and that care takes precedence over income level on the basis of equity. It is also important to focus communication on the regions in which Methodist has a prominent presence. Communication is especially important with establishing the organization in new locations, where competitors are already present. In this, it is important to emphasize Methodist Healthcare's unique focus as opposed to its rivals.