Basic HR Functions at Mount Saint Mary's Hospital & Health Center - Essay Example

Basic HR Functions at Mount Saint Marys Hospital & Health Center Basic HR Functions at Mount Saint Marys Hospital & Health Center Mount Saint Mary’s Hospital and Health Centre is a medical institution located in New York. The Sisters of Saint Francis founded the institution in the year 1907. The institution has had a very important role in taking care of the sick from all genres including the discriminated people in society such as the homeless. The institution has had an impressive growth rate in terms of the medical practitioners and the credit goes to the high quality services that it is devoted to offering the community. The hospital staff is 200 physicians who run the medical requirements of the patients on a day-to-day basis. Other than the professional team, the hospital in general employs 1200 people who are both skilled and unskilled. In addition, there are around 270 volunteers whose work is to assist in the running of facilities and the offering of services in the hospital (Adams, 2012). With such a large amount of employees in the hospital, it is certain that a number of glitches that may hinder the personnel from achieving their full potential arise. This is in terms of the relationships between various practitioners in the hospital. In the hospital, one of the issues that affect the entire facility is coordination of the employees to a maximum. Due to the high number of employees, it is rather difficult to locate the various members of staff in time for the various medical activities they are bound to carry out. The directors of a particular faculty find it rather stressful organizing the staff in an effort to accomplish the various set goals of the institution. An example is in the case of perioperative services. This faculty has had various issues in terms of the coordination of activities. However, in this situation, the issue is rather the fact that the director was always in time prior to the operation under review and this made the staff in the particular faculty displeased. This led to the development of cold feelings towards the director a factor that saw the early retirement of the director. As of this moment, the faculty is advertising for the post of director of the various services. One of the challenges that the institution has as an entity is competition. Despite the fact that competition is an encouraged concept in any form of organization, there is a point at which competition ceases to deal with the offering of quality patient services and related virtues. Rather than this, it escalates to a point where the goals involved are just to gain prestige and reputation and seek the attainment of a price in the lifeline awards (Miller, 2011). Several organizational departments in the institution have developed that attitude towards work and the upper management of the hospital has installed some strict measures to deal with these perpetrators. The fact that the upper management has brought in a resolution to the problem is one subsequent problem in real essence. This is from the fact that the hospital employees always look up to the upper management with fear of scrutiny. This fear of scrutiny is one that leads to the employees failing to report various issues in the institution that can well get a resolution from the upper management. This kind of relationship is experienced between the departments of Gastroenterology and the upper management as a whole. Another challenge experienced is the acquisition of capable well-trained employees to deal with in the sector of rehabilitation. Many of the patients in this faculty have various reactions to medication. Some may react in an irrational manner spurring a fight in the faculty while others may just lead on baseless arguments. The human resource in this sector is supposed to be capable enough of fighting with this menace but many are times that the achievement of this is sidelined. This is the point at which the other faculty staff tend to scrutinize the work done by this department and assess it as poor and that they play a role in reducing the rate of development in the hospital. This problem has led to a feud in the various departments at Mount Saint Mary’s Hospital and Health Centre. The Information Technology sector has also received a lot of pressure from the upper management of the institution. The scrutiny is in terms of the quality of facilities that it has given considering that the hospital is located in one of the biggest cities in the United States. Sometime back the running of electrical machinery in the institution was rather slow and this led to the suspension of a number of employees in the field. Despite the fact that the issue between the upper management is yet to be resolved to full completion, the fact that strictness is characteristic of the upper management has assisted in curbing this (Sullivan, 2011). There are various laws and regulations that healthcare institutions operate under. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is one act that has a very important role in the regulation of these operations (Sullivan, 2011). The privacy rule is one rule that facilities are supposed to work under. The privacy of the organizations is in the manner that the information provided by patients is supposed to be held with close and personal attention to the specific doctor treating the patient in serious cases. This issue of privacy has implicated a lot in the human resource management of Mount Saint Mary’s Hospital and Health Centre. This privacy rule has both the positive and negative implications to the human resource. This is in the manner through which the provision of various symptoms by patients encourages the doctor to carry out research in the specific field with people in the faculty. The law does not allow the passage of information to unrelated faculties despite the fact that the information may be of effectiveness later on. This is from the fact that this would seem as a breach of the contract between the patient and the doctor. This is one law that has been of great implication in Mount Saint Mary’s Hospital and Health Centre as is the case between related departments such as Internal Medicine and Colon/Rectal surgery (Volzer, 2012). The security rule is one rule that has greatly implicated the security department in the hospital. The security rule is split into three major divisions. These three divisions comprise administrative safeguards. These safeguards are the ones that show the manner through which the hospital is ready or rather equipped to deal with issues regarding policy breaching. Saint Mary’s hospital holds this as the major security division as it assists in the administration of security over the rest two divisions too. The security procedures identified in the divisions go as far up in the administration as that they affect the security administration of the board of trustees running the hospital. The other rules and regulations involving security are in terms of physical safeguards. Security guards are employed to ensure that these safeguards are in place (Volzer, 2012). These guards are instrumental in securing the organization against the intrusion of unwanted people. These guards are a very important aspect of human resource as they assist in the resolution of several other problems such as erratic patients and family members in the hospital. The Mount Saint Mary’s Hospital and Health Centre observes this law by ensuring the posting of various security guards in different areas in the organization. There are also the technological safeguards that involve Information Technology experts to handle the protection of the various patient and human resource files carefully. One of the greatest factors that affect the relationship among employees is the age difference. Many employees of the contemporary world graduate and go straight into institutions such as Saint Mary’s. One of the major problems in the institution is that there is the reluctance of the older generation doctors to retire and hence face a rather tough time getting along with the new employees. This may be due to the different education backgrounds experienced by the practitioners (Adams, 2012). Another factor leads to rocky relationships between employees is the level of education. Some practitioners get into Saint Mary’s with high qualifications while there are those attain even higher grades and enter the same institution. This often leads to a high attitude of discrimination from the brighter students towards the less bright ones. The less bright ones feel threatened also by the others and hence the atmosphere in the human relations tends to be that of tension. The third factor that leads to this misunderstanding between employees is the fact that some patients tend to prefer several doctors due to their general nature as compared to others. This in turn generates a sense of jealousy that is very poor in a health institution (Miller, 2011). There are various rationales used in the allocation of various job descriptions and other activities in the organization. One of the rationales that offer various position descriptions is the review of the medical certificate that the potential employees bear. There are various departments in the hospital and the review of these certificates comes in handy to understand the specific field of medicine to put someone. There is also the recruiting that involves a much larger field such as the security personnel. In this sector, the rationale used is looking at the commendation letters and the behavioral background of the employees. For the selection of the best candidate for a particular job description, the most outstanding in terms of grades among the nominees is handpicked for the job. Mount Saint Mary’s Hospital and Health Centre has been very influential in the community around New York. For the effectiveness of the hospital and to improve the services, it is rather imperative for the human resource department in the organization to pay much attention to the internal organization. Having this, the hospital is bound to go to greater heights in patient and community satisfaction. In addition, the reputation of the hospital will be great because of the services offered. Therefore, the hospital ought to ensure its reputation is maintained by relating well with customers. The hospital can also embark on organizational culture that ensures employees are involved in daily activities of the hospital, for instance in decision making and generating new ideas. References Adams, J. (2012). Physicians. Mount Saint Mary’s Hospital and Health Centre. Retrieved on `18th April 2012 from http://www.msmh.org/information/physicians/list-of-physicians Miller, R. (2011). Lifeline Awards. Healthcare Business Market Research Handbook, 53(2), 240-261. Volzer, R. (2012). Understanding Patient Safety Confidentiality. Health Information Privacy. Retrieved on 18th April 2012 from http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/psa/understanding/index.html Sullivan, J. (2011). HIPPA: A Practical Guide to the Privacy of Health Documents. New York: McGraw Hill Publishers. Read More