The Largest Health Service Center in Ottawa - Case Study Example

The Ottawa Hospital Executive summary: This research project is based on The Ottawa Hospital which is the largest health service center in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The hospital is serving millions of people with the exceptional world class care with the latest equipments and management techniques. However, this research project will focus on the needs assessment for the organization and include an implementation and application analysis of an improvement plan. Introduction: The Ottawa Hospital is located in east Ontario and serves more than 1.2 million patients. This report project is focused on the operations of the organization and how they can be improved where there is room for improvement. The needs assessment is carried out and based on the supporting data and statistics, the improvement plan is suggested for the organization. This research project will focus on the operations of The Ottawa Hospital and how they can be improved to improve patient satisfaction levels. The Ottawa Hospital spends a large sum of money on inpatient care and service delivery. Thus, the intervention is given to the organization and its implementation is discussed which would help in improving the organization’s operations. Description of organization: The Ottawa Hospital has a long history that goes through the formation of the Civil Hospital and General Hospital. The Ottawa Hospital was formed in 1998 when the Civic and General Hospitals combined together (Hale, 2011). Eventually, The Ottawa Hospital started using their funds to expand their services and facilities as they introduced the cancer research institute, the women’s center, the rehabilitation center, and stem cell research center. Today, The Ottawa Hospital is operating as one of the largest academic teaching hospitals in Ottawa (Hale, 2011). The hospital has four campuses across the city; it has approximately 1200 beds, 1500 physicians, 3400 nurses, and a total of 12000 employees. The hospital serves about 1.2 million patients. It has multiple functions which expand to three major operations: patient care, teaching, and research (IBM, 2012). Its vision is to provide the patients with best healthcare services that are internationally recognized. Currently, the hospital has invested heavily in the latest advanced technologies to improve their patient care and facilities. The hospital expands over 3 million square feet in a range of buildings. The hospital also supports the patient privacy as the information is kept private and is also subject to changes providing patients the best services and opportunities for feedbacks and complaints (IBM, 2012). Needs assessment: A needs assessment or gap analysis was carried out to find out the room for improvements. Currently, the hospital is doing really well with all the services and facilities being offered at the best quality (IBM, 2012). However, one of the major challenges that the hospital is facing where there is a need for improvement is the patient care delivery system. There are a growing number of patients in The Ottawa Hospital which is why the care teams are struggling with the adequate care provided at the efficient time to avoid over-occupancy. The increasing number of patients is making the system of care delivery even more complex (Karp, 2012). Currently, the hospital needs proper teams and management systems to deal with the increasing number of patients. This complex system is causing care delays, inefficiencies in manual processes, lack of team collaboration, and an inaccurate schedule for discharge. Patients are being compromised by these complexities and care teams are struggling with the system to compensate the manual processes that are inefficiently being carried out. Health care professionals were seen spending more time on information and resources and lesser time with patients, because of which there were delays in patient care and it impacted the overall patient experience. Intervention proposal: In order to fill the room for improvement, the hospital should improve the care management system by improving coordination among the practitioners so that they can spend more time with patients, improve the manual processes efficiency levels, improve patient experiences by improving communication methods and avoiding over-occupancy. The system should be less complex so that the care team can work efficiently and not compromise on the service delivery to the patients. This could be done by introducing new tools and a clear management hierarchy. Thus, the care management system should be improved by taking into account the related operations; this would eventually improve the patient care delivery and patient experience would also be better. Justification: Proposing a better and less complex management system through improved coordination techniques and communication tools would be beneficial for the hospital through a cultural, social, legal, and practical point of view. This proposed intervention would be culturally and socially beneficial as it would allow the hospital to improve the patient experience and satisfaction levels leading to a healthy society. If the biggest healthcare center of the city improves the patient satisfaction levels by providing them the adequate care in the minimal time, it would create a healthier society with lesser chances of relapses of diseases (Karp, 2012). This intervention would be beneficial in the economical sense as it would result in lesser occupancy and would reduce the time of patient care delivery. The occupancy levels will decrease and the patients will be given efficient services in an adequate time which would cause lesser operational costs in care delivery. Better care management teams would also result in managed care which would improve the hospitals’ functions and operations as patient care delivery is the major objective of the hospital (Cohn, 2008). Through this intervention, the care practitioners would also be able to give adequate time to the information and resources, research, and patient delivery. The legal and regulatory aspects can be analyzed under this intervention as it would allow the hospital to provide a better coordination and communication access to patients. The regulations guide the hospitals to provide ethical care and privacy to the patients’ information (Cohn, 2008). This would be protected when the intervention will be implemented as the care management team will be able to take care of the patients well leaving the administration tasks for other members. Every hospital must ensure that their care management teams are coordinating and communicating under the ethical practices and legal frameworks that are guarded by legislation (Cohn, 2008). This intervention can be justified as it covers all the necessary aspects and tends to respond to the patient experience in a positive manner. Application: For The Ottawa Hospital, this intervention will be applicable from the three elements of social, economics, and managed care. The Ottawa Hospital is one of the biggest hospitals in Ottawa and it serves millions of people (IBM, 2012). The social element in this intervention to improve patient care delivery and patient experience is that it would overall improve the society and promote a healthier society. Satisfied patients and managed care from the biggest hospital and research center of the city would promote a more health conscious society and give them a satisfactory care delivery. The second element which is applicable through this intervention for the Ottawa Hospital is the economical element. Currently, the problem with patient care delivery and a complex system eventually increases the operational costs as patients are over-occupying beds and there is a delay in efficient care. This complex management system also creates inefficient manual processes that are prolonged and can cause more economical damage. The intervention which is proposed would promote efficiency and service delivery on time which would eventually cut down the bed over-occupancy costs and a good patient flow would increase the financial status of the hospital with more patients (Shelton, 2000). The third element is the managed care element which is an important application for the Ottawa Hospital as currently the care system is very complex. This managed care element tells that managed care is the major asset for a healthcare organization as it ensures that the patients are getting care at the right time and they are satisfied. Managed care also ensures that the care team practitioners are all performing their tasks at the adequate time (Hall, 2013). This intervention will ensure that the care management team is coordinating with the activities such as research, information and resources, along with patient care. An efficient care management team would coordinate and communicate effectively using tools that allow them to promote managed care and improve patient satisfaction levels (Milakovich, 2005). Implementation: The proposed intervention is based on a care management system which enables the care practitioners to coordinate and communicate well with each other to improve the operational activities. The purpose of this intervention is the basis which must be explained to all the stakeholders involved in a meeting. A model must be created which would outline the basic objectives of this intervention being improved patient care delivery system, improved patient flow, patient experience, and a better coordination and communication between and among the care practitioners and patients (Wolper, 2011). These important objectives must be explained to the stakeholders in a collaborative meeting. The major stakeholders involved in this intervention are the management team, the practitioners, the physicians, and the clinical staff members. These stakeholders have a major role in implementing the intervention as the management will enable new policies and strategies to deal with the efficient care management team, the care practitioners will coordinate and communicate with each other to ensure that adequate time is given to the research, information, and patient care, the physicians will ensure quality care being given to the patients within the adequate time, and the clinical staff members will ensure that the manual processes are carried out efficiently. This will overall result in higher patient satisfactory levels (Shelton, 2000). From the finance department, there must be assurance that there are enough funds to fund the intervention. New communication equipments such as pagers must be introduced for practitioners and patients to communicate and coordinate easier, new technologically advance machinery to improve patient care, and trainers to train the care management team. Marketing: With a new intervention, there must also be a marketing communication plan which helps the manager to communicate with all the stakeholders and keep them updated. The plan would be introduced in a stakeholders’ meeting which is necessary as there is no better way of communicating and demonstrating an intervention than through a face-to-face meeting with demonstrations (Wolper, 2011). The care management system would be proposed using different management techniques to explain the hierarchy and the jobs of the care practitioners. Charts and strategic maps will be used to demonstrate the management system according to which the practitioners, physicians, and clinical staff will perform getting a tract of their day-to-day tasks. The meeting will be held prior to the intervention. During the intervention, the management charts and strategic maps will be given out to all stakeholders and a detailed copy of the intervention so that they can understand and review it well. Post intervention, the stakeholders will have the feedback forms and the statistical data of the implementation of the intervention. This will enable them to evaluate and judge the effectiveness of the intervention. Throughout the intervention, the stakeholders will be in coordination with the help of digital media, pagers, emails, text messages, and phone calls. All the immediate and direct communication methods will be used to keep the stakeholders up-to-date (Vasilache, 2013). Effectiveness: There are several ways through which the effectiveness of the intervention can be measured. The best indicator is the level of patient experience and satisfaction which could be measured through comments and feedbacks (Robert, 2011). Then there can be statistical data which measures the occupancy level as compared to the pre-intervention situation. The finance managers must also indicate the effect on the financial condition before and after the intervention. The care management team must also indicate the general observation in the lower complexity of the management system and the effective patient care delivery. These indicators will evaluate the success of the intervention (Robert, 2011). Conclusion: Thus, this research project concludes that The Ottawa Hospital is currently undergoing a challenging situation where the patients’ experience isn’t satisfactory. They have to wait for long and undergo inefficient manual processes and receive less time with the physician. This can be improved with the intervention proposed in this research which includes an improved care management system that would allow practitioners and physicians to coordinate and communicate effectively to improve the quality of care provided and improve patient satisfaction levels. References Cohn, K. (2008). The Business of Healthcare: Improving systems of care. Greenwood Publishing Group Hale, J. (2011). Frommer’s Ottawa. John Wiley & Sons Hall, R. (2013). Patient Flow: Reducing Delay in Healthcare Delivery. Springer IBM. (2012). The Ottawa Hospital improves patient care and safety. IBM Corporation Karp, I. (2012). Epidemiological Research: An Introduction. Springer Milakovich, M. (2005). Improving Service Quality in the Global Economy: Achieving High Performance in Public and Private Sectors. CRC Press Robert, G. (2011). Bringing User Experience to Healthcare Improvement. Radcliffe Publishing Shelton, P. (2000). Measuring and Improving Patient Satisfaction. Jones & Bartlett Learning Vasilache, S. (2013). Cross-Cultural Training and Teamwork in Healthcare. IGI Global Wolper, L. (2011). Health Care Administration: Managing Organized Delivery Systems. Jones & Bartlett Publishers Read More