Peculiarities in the Health Care Organization: Watson Clinic, LLP - Case Study Example

 Issues in the Health Care Organization: Watson Clinic, LLP Case Summary Watson Clinic is an expert health care provider, offering specialty health services ranging from chemotherapy for cancer patients, dietary counseling, nuclear cardiology, robotic surgery, physical therapy, and radiation therapy (watsonclinic.com, 2009). Since its inception in 1941, Watson Clinic has diversified its total business portfolio to include 12 different facilities, each geographically dispersed across Florida and each specializing in different health services for unique demographics. For example, the Center for Cancer Care & Research provides “detection, diagnosis, and supportive follow up care of patients with cancer and hematological disorders” (watsonclinic.com, 2009, p.1). The Watson Clinic Women’s Center offers cosmetic surgery services and digital mammography for the female patient (watsonclinic.com). Watson receives continuous awards for innovation and service delivery. However, there are opportunities to better enhance the organizational environment, improve diversity and reorganize the business for a more efficient organizational structure. This report identifies Watson Clinic’s strengths and weaknesses, offering suggestions for improvement. The Organizational Environment Watson Clinic maintains an organizational environment which must be adaptive to ongoing change practices in relation to business strategy, technology use and redevelopment, and in the provision of patient care to community citizens with regularly changing social values and lifestyle beliefs. “Organizational structure must be more flexible when environmental change is rapid” (Jones and George, 2008, p.10-9). Watson Clinic appears to have this flexibility by maintaining a rather centralized hierarchy where decision-making is not spread across layers of management. In relation to patient care, Watson Clinic must respond to differing social beliefs and values of community citizens, offering counseling services and generic treatment in a way that is meaningful and socially-relevant to the patients. Because patient needs change regularly in society, the organizational environment demands that Watson Clinic leadership remain dedicated to understanding what drives excellence in patient care by conducting research on patient needs in relation to social belonging, health security, and even issues of self-esteem for cancer patients dealing with this debilitating illness. In order to provide such excellence, at the interpersonal level, Watson Clinic must maintain appropriate training programs which emphasize the emotional importance of patient needs so that physicians and other health support staff can provide superior customer service. Managerial decision-making is impacted by changing patient values as they are the driver for new and innovative training programs related to proper counseling techniques and the interpersonal relationship with patients. Technology is a major environmental issue at Watson Clinic, with new therapy equipment changing constantly to provide more sophisticated and streamline health care. Especially in areas of nuclear cardiology, physical therapy, and robotic surgery, these changing environmental issues drive management decision-making in areas of cost and procurement as well as providing the necessary physician and staff training to operate these technologies effectively and without providing liability to the health care organization. Ongoing replacement and redevelopment of health care technologies demand that Watson Clinic develops the internal expertise necessary to use these technologies to provide better patient services. From the management perspective, the strategic costs of these equipment upgrades or replacements are major considerations at the decision-making level. Diversity and Decision-Making “Diversity is not a one-size-fits-all concept. Diversity objectives should reflect the unique goals, settings, and cultures of the various medical (facilities) with which they are associated” (Coleman, Palmer and Winnick, 2008, p.4). Watson Clinic does not publicly promote their specific internal diversity initiatives, however the company does recognize the importance of a diverse employee culture and works to satisfy the cultural interests of its employee population. For example, Watson Clinic was recently honored with an accreditation from The National Committee for Quality Assurance for the clinic’s ability to provide excellence in staff and patient diversity focus (ncqa.org, 2009). Watson Clinic recruits people of different socio-economic and racial backgrounds and then works to build a rewarding organizational environment with equal opportunities. “By striving to become more culturally diverse, health care providers will become more sensitive to themselves and their patients” (Angelucci, 1995, p.72). At Watson Clinic, ongoing efforts to improve service delivery and strengthen colleague relationships at the internal level are ongoing campaigns. At this clinic, diversity is not only measured by race or socio-economic backgrounds, it is measured in how well physicians and other support staff recognize differing patient needs and work to incorporate sociological lessons into their patient care delivery philosophies. Diversity is also measured by the lack of glass ceiling at Watson Clinic, which is defined as “invisible barriers which prevent women from being promoted to top corporate positions” (Jones and George, 2008, p.5-8). A brief review of the clinic’s high-level administration indicates many women in senior-ranking positions, carrying out a great deal of the decision-making at the business. There do not seem to be racial or gender barriers whatsoever at Watson Clinic, giving them a diversity model which consistently receives acknowledgement from independent auditors and specialists in diversity theory and practice. At the external level, diversity includes creating meaningful relationships with suppliers who are part of the entire Watson Clinic value chain. For example, Watson Clinic works directly with Compserv in areas of information technology support and procurement (mainline.com, 2009). Compserv provides support services both in-house and through other communications channels, requiring Watson Clinic staff to understand how to work with diverse cultures and values in other organizational staff. These partnerships appear to be giving Watson Clinic more experience in creating experience with knowledge-sharing and teamwork with multi-cultural business and service suppliers. Evaluation of Mission Statement and SWOT Analysis Watson Clinic’s mission statement is relatively straight-forward: “We are committed to exceeding patient expectations and offering only the latest technologies and most renowned physicians to deliver a level of health care normally afforded to only the largest metropolitan areas” (Saco, 2009, p.1). The mission statement hints toward its diversity policies as it is attempting to offer high-class services to members of society with radically-different economic and cultural backgrounds. The mission statement clearly indicates that the business is technologically-capable of providing excellence in health care, offering incentives at the consumer level for choosing this clinic over its many competitors in the Florida region. The mission statement is also a marketing promotional tool to give the clinic more community exposure and differentiate itself from other competing clinics and health care organizations. This highly competitive health care environment demands unique mission statements and philosophies in order to gain market share. A brief SWOT analysis of Watson Clinic: Strengths: Technology – Watson Clinic maintains new and innovative technologies to improve patient care. This is both a competitive tool and an effort to modernize the clinic for areas of health care delivery. The vast variety of services and treatments offered demand sophistication in technology development and procurement. Expansion – Watson Clinic has opened many of its facilities just in the last five to ten years, diversifying the clinic’s portfolio in relation to patient revenues. New facilities devoted to specialized care give this clinic a competitive edge by offering more services than competing organizations. Weaknesses: Policy Formation – Watson Clinic recently implemented a non-smoking policy which now includes no smoking anywhere on the outside grounds (White, 2007). This created many staff member complaints in areas of personal rights. Watson Clinic, despite its focus on diversity, creates policies which often cause employees to feel dissatisfaction. No Code of Ethics – A code of ethics contains “standards of ethical behavior for health care executives in their professional relationships” (ACHE, 2008, p.1). Watson Clinic has no such code of ethics to drive unified employee behaviors. Opportunities: Marketing – Watson clinic does not seem to provide enough promotion for its internal activities in print format. The business can maximize its exposure in community regions by devoting more budget to advertising. International expansion – Watson Clinic can expand into Canada or Mexico to provide top-quality health services and improve revenues. Threats: Increased competition – Growth in health care provision at the hospital or clinic level can rapidly reduce Watson Clinic’s market share. Costs – Routine technology upgrades and rising costs within the supply chain create budgetary problems, requiring cost-reduction efforts to be ongoing to ensure profitability. Recommended Organizational Structure Watson Clinic seems to have a functional design which drives the organizational structure at the health care provider. This is noticeable with the company having a top-tier leadership team and sub-management groups specializing in each variety of health care services and delivery. Since many of these health services are interconnected, such as offering counseling at one Watson facility and then treatment at another, the functional design gives advantages such as the managerial “ease of monitoring and evaluating workers” (Jones and George, 2008, p.10-25). Having junior-level administrators responsible for coordinating their own division, rather than adopting a more interdependent organizational structure, allows managers to train, reward or develop their own staff members. All of these business functions work together under the single Watson Clinic brand name, therefore a functional organizational structure pools both resources and expertise to create cross-functional team members. Decision-making is driven at the individual facility or division management and is communicated to senior-level administrators or top-down to employees. There is a disadvantage to the functional design, however, which includes difficulty in inter-department communications (Jones and George). For example, leaders in the chemotherapy division might be forced to search through multiple communication channels in order to receive senior-level approval on budget issues or simply to discuss problems in the department. Because these facilities or divisions are geographically dispersed across Florida, many communications cannot be made face-to-face, requiring managers to rely on email or mobile technologies to present their concerns or ideas. The recommended organizational structure for Watson Clinic is actually the functional structure, as no other viable options exist based on the way the clinic has been organized geographically and related to individual health care services. For example, the clinic is much more service-focused than product focused, therefore the product structure would not give the clinic much benefit. Since much decision-making is made at the top levels at Watson Clinic, geographic organizational structure would not be efficient as junior-level administrators, in each facility, are not authorized to make important business decisions at the strategic level. The market structure, also, would not be effective for Watson Clinic since facilities are designed to offer inter-dependent services to patients and no single type of health care service or treatment is conducted within a single facility. As mentioned previously, cancer treatment occurs in one division while counseling is offered to the same patient in another division. Any other structure than the functional structure, which groups the entire conglomerate of services into a single organizational structure, would not be beneficial for Watson Clinic. Figure 1 represents a diagram of the functional structure for Watson Clinic. Because the divisions and departments are so vast, not all could be included in the diagram. However, this functional structure shows how inter-related all divisions are and this organizational chart assumes that junior-level management and staff members are interdependent as both decision-makers and team members who all report to senior-level administration, such as the CEO. Figure 1: Recommended function structure for Watson Clinic. Conclusion Watson Clinic has many activities which can be benchmarked, such as its devotion to new technology as a support tool and competitive tool. The company provides equal opportunities for all socio-economic or racial backgrounds and has been recognized for consistent quality over its 68 years of operations. Watson Clinic remains largely focused on training and development, procurement of modern technologies in its supply and value chains, and works to strengthen relationships with internal staff and external business partners/suppliers as well. Despite the potential threats facing Watson Clinic, such as rising competition and rising costs, the clinic is well-positioned for success at the employee, patient and community levels. References ACHE. (2008). “ACHE Code of Ethics”. American College of Healthcare Executives. Retrieved November 16, 2009 from http://www.ache.org/ABT_ACHE/code.cfm. Angelucci, Patricia. (1995). “Cultural diversity: Health belief systems”. Nursing Management, 26(8), p.72. Coleman, A., Palmer, S. and Winnick, S. (2008). “Roadmap to Diversity: Key legal and educational policy foundations for medical schools”. Association of American Medical Colleges. Jones, G. and George, J. (2008). Contemporary Management, 5th ed. McGraw Hill Irwin. Mainline.com. (2009). “Watson Clinic Upgrades IT Infrastructure for Patient-Centered Care with IT Solution from Mainline. Retrieved November 18, 2009 from http://www.mainline.com/_web/success_stories/SS-Watson-Clinic.html Ncqa.org. (2009). “Measuring quality, improving health care”. National Committee for Quality Assurance. Retrieved November 16, 2009 from http://www.ncqa.org/ Saco, Louis. (2009). “A Message from the CEO”. Watson Clinic. Retrieved November 17, 2009 from http://www.watsonclinic.com/aboutUS/messageFromCEO.aspx. Watsonclinic.com. (2009). “History of Watson Clinic”. Retrieved November 16, 2009 from http://www.watsonclinic.com/aboutUS/history.aspx. Watsonclinic.com. (2009). “Services”. Retrieved November 16, 2009 from http://www.watsonclinic.com/services/default.aspx. White, Gary. (2007). “Watson Clinic bans smoking, and helps its employee quit”. Retrieved November 17, 2009 from http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070305/NEWS/703050318/1021/RSS06&source=RSS Read More