Henry Ford Health System - Essay Example

Henry Ford Health System Henry Ford Health System Henry Ford Health System is a medical institution located in Detroit. The institution has grown vastly over the past couple of years and this is attributed to the strategic plans that the Human Resource department has incorporated with regard to developing in future. The hospital has had many developments and people have in turn appreciated the hospital and the quality of services that it offers. Understanding the internal and external running of the institution is important for it offers a platform for understanding the various strengths that the company has in order to continue working in that manner. However, there is also the weakness part followed by the threats, opportunities and legal issues that ought to get reviews for the general improvement of the organization with regard to human resource majorly and other sectors. One of the strengths that the hospital portrays is with regard to corporate social responsibility. In the entire Detroit area, this is the only hospital that offers weekly visits to children in shelter homes and offers medication and vaccinations to these children in an effort to assist them grow up to be productive for their own sake and the sake of the society in a whole. Another strength that the institution has is with regard to the human resource stature. Not many institutions in contemporary United States medical arena have the high amount of volunteers that the institution has. The reason for its prominence is the manner in which the hospital administration treats its employees and visitors. This makes people inclined to work in the location and consequently the quality and quantity of work carried out by the institution increases. There is also strength in the security rule that is one 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. Henry Ford 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 hospital staff is 300 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 1400 people who are both skilled and unskilled. In Henry Ford, 280 volunteers assist in the running of facilities and the offering of services in the hospital (Henry Ford Hospital, 2014). 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. This comes in as one of the weaknesses portrayed by the institution. 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 preoperative 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 (Volzer, 2012). 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 tends 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 Henry Ford Health System. The Information Technology sector has also received a lot of pressure from the upper management of the institution and this is a great threat to the success 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). One of the greatest factors that affect the relationship among employees is the age difference and with the vast amounts in which it takes place, it is categorized as a threat. Many employees of the contemporary world graduate and go straight into institutions such as Henry Ford. 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 Henry Ford 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 (Miller, 2011). 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 The fact that the hospital had had a steady increase in the number of patients is an opportunistic factor generally; however, this has some negative implications when viewing the performance of each of the doctors. As is with any industry, it is important to understand that an increase in customers or patients as is the case here leads to shoddy jobs. This means that the attendants will carry out their activities fast just to get to another waiting patient and this is a very negative and disapproved factor especially in the healthcare setting (Hernandez, 2009). The reason is that with this kind of activities, there is a tendency of wrong diagnosis and medicine administration that has many implications. 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 Henry Ford Health System. This privacy rule has both the positive and negative implications to the running of the hospital. 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 (Volzer, 2012). 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 Henry Ford Health System as is the case between related departments such as Internal Medicine and Colon/Rectal surgery. 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 Henry Ford Health System observes this law by ensuring the posting of various security guards in different areas in the organization (Schulz, 2013). There are also the technological safeguards that involve Information Technology experts to handle the protection of the various patient and human resource files carefully. There are various rationales used in the allocation of various job descriptions and other activities in the organization and this leads to increased opportunities 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. This ensures that only quality people run the institution. Henry Ford Health System has been very influential in the community around New York. For hospital’s effectiveness, 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 Henry Ford Hospital. (2014). Medical Records. Retrieved Hernandez, R. (2009). Strategic Human Resource Management in Hospital. London: Oxford University Press. http://www.henryford.com/body_hfh.cfm?id=37110 http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/psa/understanding/index.html Miller, R. (2011). Lifeline Awards. Healthcare Business Market Research Handbook, 53(2), 240-261. Schulz, R. (2013). Management of hospitals and Health Services. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Sullivan, J. (2011). HIPPA: A Practical Guide to the Privacy of Health Documents. New York: McGraw Hill Publishers. Volzer, R. (2012). Understanding Patient Safety Confidentiality. Health Information Privacy. Retrieved on 18th April 2012 from Read More