The Services of Cleveland Clinic - Essay Example

Individual Written Analysis of Case THESIS MENT This essay is mainly about analysing a particular case based on evaluating various approaches used by Cleveland Clinic in order to grow its business. By evaluating such approaches, the essay aims to recommend which growth initiatives should Cleveland adopt and how can it develop the service quality for supporting this growth. GROWTH INITIATIVE SHOULD CLEVELAND CLINIC EXPAND Cleveland Clinic’s Overall Strategy. The services of Cleveland Clinic are globally renowned for quality. The Clinic has taken several initiatives in order to grow its business by adopting and implementing the strategies like working on attaining greater patient satisfaction, better coordination and development of operational procedure. In order to generate superior value for patients, Cleveland had evaluated the requirements of the patients in the first place, restructured the organisation in order to fulfil those requirements and developed information technology (IT) system (Porter and Teisberg 1-23). Critical Components of Cleveland’s Overall Strategy. According to the case provided, the three critical components of Cleveland’s overall strategy include innovation, culture and growth. Cleveland has made innovation in several areas like medical services. A few of its innovation comprise establishing world first heart transplant by implanting artificial heart and developing first computerised information registry on cardiac diagnosis among others. Furthermore, Cleveland remained much committed towards maintaining excellent team culture with outstanding administrative and interactive abilities (Porter and Teisberg 1-23). Where Cleveland Clinic Made Most Progress? Most of the progress of Cleveland was concentrated on the area of health system, organisational structure, patient satisfaction and information technology. In order to enhance the health system, Dr. Cosgrove, the CEO of the Clinic has started to rationalise the healthcare services across the system. The objective was to deliver appropriate care at the right place for each patient. As a part of rationalisation, several activities were undertaken, for example, obstetrics were shifted to community hospitals and psychiatry facilities were focused on one community area among others. Furthermore, Cleveland also improved the health system by increasing constancy and incorporation of care paths and by developing a common medical recoding system (Porter and Teisberg 1-23). Specially mentioning, the organisational structure of Cleveland has also improved considerably. In the year 2007, Dr. Cosgrove has reorganised every healthcare service by establishing new units. The creation of every unit encompasses allocating respective leadership team and set of mutual performance outcome measures. By the end of the year 2007, there were about nine new healthcare delivery units for Cleveland (Porter and Teisberg 1-23). The increased focus of patient satisfaction inferred high attention towards the experience of every patient regarding the services delivered. Cleveland has enhanced the service experience, gathered information on patients’ requirements in terms of delay times, physical facilities, employee politeness, better communication and better management of pain. Ultimately, Cleveland has also improved information technology for making better performance. It had incorporated the electronic medical recording system by implementing single data warehouse, controlled longitudinally by patients. Cleveland also transformed the information technology by supporting result measurement, learning and better access to information among others (Porter and Teisberg 1-23). Various Approaches of Growing. There are basically four growth initiatives that an organisation can undertake in order to make progress in business. These entail market penetration, market development, product/service development and diversification. Market penetration initiative represents increasing the sales of existing services in the present market. This approach of growth is quite useful for Cleveland as the current healthcare market of the US is growing and developing. In such circumstance, the Clinic might be able to attract more patients by competing through developing more effective healthcare plans and planning better fee structure for the services provided. The other way of making higher growth through using market penetration initiative is to provide more concentrated efforts on distributing healthcare services through active promotion. Market development initiative includes instigating sales of existing services in new business market. This strategy of growth can be followed at the time when existing markets become immobile with respect to growth or when gaining more market share is hard to accomplish due to the presence of strong and dominant competitors. Cleveland has used this strategy by expanding its existing services in diverse business markets outside the US. This strategy is further recommended to the Clinic as it can help to enlarge the business and also to exploit the market opportunities. Cleveland can expand the services to new regional markets where it has not reached yet. Service development is the other important growth initiative, which involves delivering new services to the existing business market. Service development strategy is also suitable for Cleveland since it possess strong customer base and have the capability to retain those customers by providing new services to them or by improving the quality of services. In order to pursue this initiative, Cleveland can involve itself in the procedure of vertical integration by incorporating associated services that had been traditionally developed or provided by others. Following this strategy might help the Clinic to satisfy the changing requirements of the customers. On the other hand, diversification strategy necessitates developing new services in new business market. However, this strategy is not suitable to pursue for Cleveland, as diversification is profitable when there is a slow growth in existing business market or when it becomes riskier for organisations to stay competitive in present market due to any environmental change. RECOMMENDATIONS TO DR. COSGRAVE The following initiatives in the form of recommendations can help Cleveland to enhance its service quality and initiate strong growth. Lean Approach. For improving the services, Cleveland can introduce lean approach in its clinic. Lean philosophy is derived from ‘Toyota Production System’ and in Cleveland, it would help in minimising the wastes and therefore enhance the overall customer value. Performance Incentives. Cleveland can provide performance incentives for the employees in order to motivate them for delivering better services. Performance incentives can also ensure better patient satisfaction. Minimisation of Errors and Waiting Time. Cleveland can also enhance the service quality through reducing the level of errors and waiting time for customers. This would support the growth of Cleveland at large. Work Cited Porter, Michael E. and Elizabeth O. Teisberg. “Cleveland Clinic Growth Strategy 2012.” Harvard Business School (2013): 1-23. Print. Read More