Heritage Valley Medical Center - Assignment Example

? Heritage Valley Medical Center Heritage Valley Medical Center In the past, Heritage Valley Medical Center was a very successful medical facility, serving all its patients with dignity and equality to an extent that both the community and the staff of the facility were completely satisfied with the services. However, this has changed over time, with the introduction of a change in the medical policy that allowed more minority population to access the services offered by the facility. This change saw the community patient ratios change from the initial 80% Caucasian, 15% African American, and 5% Hispanic, to a new ratio of 50% Caucasian, 40% African, and 10% Hispanic. With this change, the financial capacity of the medical center has gown down, since the increase in the minority community patients means a reduction in private pay patients and thus money paid for the medical services (Buchbinder & Thompson, 2010). However, the ethnic composition of the health medical center staff did not change, having the facilities team dominated by the Caucasian medical professionals, while the African Americans dominated the support and the administrative staff segment of the facility. The Hispanic community was barely represented, having just one manager in the entire team. The whole executive team was dominated by Caucasians who made a 100% of the team members. There was a good cooperation between the staff of the facilities, until a report regarding the satisfaction of the communities with the facility services was discussed at a meeting. During the meeting, it became apparent that the minorities were not satisfied with the services. Several diversity and cultural issues can be indentified in this case. Ethnicity is one of the issues; where by the white medical staffs do not seem to appreciate the patients from the minority communities. The Caucasian staffs accuse the African Americans of being uncouth and acting ghetto and foolish, and the Hispanics of being unable to speak English. According to the staff, both the African Americans and the Hispanics cannot communicate with them, something that has created a difficulty in service offering. Gender imbalance is yet another issue that can be indentified in the case, where we have an executive team comprising of 100% Caucasian staffs, where only one of the team members is female. This indicates that the facility staff composition has not put gender balance policy in place (Buchbinder & Thompson, 2010). Another issue identifiable in this case is the lack of diversity in the staff composition under some segments. While the executive and the medical professional segments are represented by the Caucasian predominantly, the administrative and support staff segment is represented by the African Americans. The Hispanics do not seem to have any representation in the staff team. This is a clear indication that there lacks diversity in the staff team (Buchbinder & Thompson, 2010). Cultural value disrespect is yet another issue that is apparent in this case. The Caucasian staffs do not seem to value the cultures of other communities, especially the minority communities. They regard the language of other communities as intolerable, while perceiving the accompanying of minority patients by their family members into the facility as uncivilized. The African Americans on the other hand do not seem to be proud of their culture, and they disregard the cultures of the Hispanics and the Asians, arguing they need to learn how to speak in English. Language barrier is yet another issue observable in the case, where the patients and the staffs do not seem to understand each other when they are communicating (Buchbinder & Thompson, 2010). The nurses argue that they cannot understand the language spoken by the Asians and the Africans, and as such, they may not be able to serve their needs appropriately. Nepotism is yet another issue identified in the case, where the Caucasian community patients seems satisfied with the services offered by the medical center, while the other two communities who takes their patients there are dissatisfied. Since the bulk of the Caucasian patients are the private pay patients, who bring more money into the facility than the other community patients, and owing to the fact that they can communicate effectively and efficiently with the medical staff, they end up getting good services, while the minority communities lacks the same. Cultural degradation is another issue identifiable in this case. The staff members of the medical facility used to cooperate and work as a team in the past. However, this seems to change with the change in the diversification of the patient population. The whites are against the African Americans, the Hispanics, and the Asians. The Hispanic manager is against the African managers, while the African managers are against the conduct of the Asians and the Hispanics. The culture of the medical center has changed. Previously, the culture was based on valuing all patients and respecting them. The staff had a culture of working as team. All this has now been undermined (Buchbinder & Thompson, 2010). Such issues are detrimental to the future of the medical center to sustain itself and meet the community needs. Lack of diversification in the staff composition makes the minority community members of the staff feel discriminated, in that they are not represented in the decision making and executive team of the medical center. This is likely to affect the morale of such staff and have them perform poorly. Since the Caucasian community patients keep leaving the medical facility and the minority patients keep increasing, the staffs need to value the minority patients. This is because, if they fail to value them, they may end up losing them as well, meaning that the future financial capability of the facility will be jeopardized. Ethnicity is yet another issue that is threatening the future of the medical facility (Buchbinder & Thompson, 2010). With the identification of the staff members with their own ethnic groups, the future of teamwork among the staff members is being threatened. Without teamwork between the staff members, then the mission and visions of the medical center regarding meeting community needs cannot be met. Thus, there is a need to address these issues, in order to ensure that the staff of the facility works together as a team, while valuing and upholding each patient with dignity and equality, regardless of the community the patient comes from. Works Cited Buchbinder, S., and Thompson, J. (2010). Teamwork Career Opportunities in Health Care Management: Perspectives from the Field. Jones & Bartlett Learning. Read More