Projects in Healthcare Industry - Essay Example

"Projects in Healthcare Industry" is a worthy example of a paper on the health system. Projects in the healthcare industry run in an environment in which a number of external influential factors exist. These factors also tend to be stakeholders in project management as well. Due to the sensitive and complex nature of the healthcare industry, it is important to have an effective project management plan in place. According to Schwalbe and Furlong, “Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements (18).” In designing a project, it is important to have sufficient information regarding the project’s objectives, its stakeholders, project team, and manager, process groups, project processes along with tools and techniques required to achieve the project’s objectives efficiently and effectively. This information is critical for project planning, implementation, and control.

An important aspect of project management is its stakeholders that are involved in or affected by the project activities. These stakeholders can be categorized as project sponsors, the team involved in planning and implementation, support personnel, consumers/ customers, end-users, suppliers and even competitors or opposing parties (Schwalbe and Furlong 18).  The team members of projects taking place in the healthcare industry vary greatly from other industries. These project teams include designer of the project who is responsible for generating ideas behind the project, processes, analyzing requirements and presenting opportunities. Another important part of the project team is a project manager who is responsible for ensuring a liaison between all the stakeholders and developing reasonable and realistic project scope, schedule and financial status along with different facilities for project completion. Another important part of the project team is a medical practitioner or practitioner that is responsible for ensuring the effective medical practices are included sufficiently and appropriately in the project (Schwalbe and Furlong 21). There can also be support team members such as administrators, nursing staff, peripheral physicians, legal department, finance department, lab staff, etc (Schwalbe and Furlong 22).

Project management is a combination of five major activities that are initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling (Schwalbe and Furlong 23). These activities are carried are out by five major project management process groups. It is important to note that members of these separate activities or project processes may overlap. While carrying out project management activities, project managers and project teams are required to have access to several tools and have sufficient command over techniques that can assist them in effective project management. Tools like Gantt charts, requisition reports, stage/ phase reports, etc., help in improving the process by keeping track of performance, identifying digression from desired standards and introducing corrective measures. In order to continue effective project management, project managers and team members are required to have due competencies in different knowledge areas that are critical to the success of any specific activity. These knowledge areas are integration, scope, time, cost, quality, human resource, communication, risk, procurement, and stakeholders’ management (Schwalbe and Furlong 25).  Techniques like scope management plans, schedule performance measurement, cost baselines measurements, statistical tools, communication templates and web-based tools, impact matrices, risk rankings, supplier evaluation matrices, and issue logs, etc assist in achieving project’s objectives and manage these knowledge areas effectively.

 

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