Kaiser Permanente Healthcare Organization - Essay Example

Health Organization Case Study al Affiliation Health Organization Case Study KAISER PERMANENTE HEALTHCARE Kaiser Permanente Healthcare organization is a non-profit group inception. Kaiser Permanente attributes its origin to Henry Kaiser, who was an industrialist and Sidney Garfield who was a doctor. It is an umbrella network comprising three entities. These are Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, Permanente Medical Groups as well as the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. Kaiser Permanente provides health care and has 9.3 million health plan members, 14600 physicians, 167300 workers, 38 medical centres and 611 offices (Nudelman & Davoudi, 2014). This paper scrutinizes the Kaiser Permanente Healthcare organization with the intention of finding out its organizational structure, its readiness to tackles future needs, as well as its growth and resource management. One of the Kaiser Permanente group’s focus is in addressing the healthcare needs of individuals in the future. Its readiness in doing so showcases itself through various ways. One of the prominent mechanisms by which it forecasts future needs and ways to tackle them is via the running of an efficient innovation consultancy department (Jaffe, Sidney & Young, 2014)).The innovation consultancy is made up of innovation specialists that first conduct a survey of the clinical settings. They observe how the health care providers do their jobs, how they interact with each other, with the existing technology, and with patients and the feedback from the patients. The specialists do this by watching people, taking notes, taking pictures and making sketches. Also, the organization derives information from subjective evidence. The professionals are keen on getting information from the nurses and the patients. Such information includes details on what are the nurse’s opinions on the daily activities of the hospitals and whether the patients are satisfied or not. The organization compiles this information from all the individuals and analyzes it. The analysis involves information. The goal is to find clues on what transpires in the hospital and healthcare facilities ‘environment in order to try come up with possible solutions. From that point forward, it designs new practices and, methods to improve the current services as well as new practices that will anticipate new needs of the customers. This showcases the organization’s readiness to tackle healthcare issues of the near, as well as the distant future. Kaiser Permanente strategy for expansion and growth of its network involve a combination of acquisitions and collaboration with other health care agencies to broaden the market map. For example, on July 29th, 2014, Kaiser announced plans to strengthen its successful cooperation with Johns Hopkins Medicine. The goal of partnerships is to enable the organizations share the research work as well as to be able to reach more of the population (McCarthy, Mueller &Wren, 2009). It also involves collaboration on education and research endeavors and exploration of how organizations can work hand in hand to create better health care models for the communities and their consumers i.e. the patients. Collaboration between the health institutions enables health services to reach more people as well as escalating medical solutions to the bedside away from the bench. The healthcare organization also engages with external bodies to tap into the foreign market and increase its network. Being a large body with an extensive network, Kaiser faces problem of shortages of nurse staffing from time to time. The nursing shortage is always a looming issue in the healthcare industry, and Kaiser has laid out a strategy intended to address this as well as other problems associated with nurse staffing. The organization focuses on the continuous recruitment of nursing staff that would work in the different specialties in the various medical facilities in collaboration with the human resource and management department. It is also focused on instituting correct nurse-patient ratios. In relation to this issue, the Kaiser Permanente reaches out to the states’ nursing associations to work together in aligning the hospital nursing staff with the needs of the healthcare facilities.ie, the patient needs. The organization increases the number of nursing staff according to the seriousness of the conditions or illnesses affecting the patients (Graetz, 2014). The state usually mandates certain requirements for nurse staffing in the region. Kaiser Permanente has worked out its strategy in a way that complies with all these requirements sometimes exceeding them. The Kaiser Permanente organization offers temporary jobs to nursing staff that are in need of them especially ones on temporary contracts. The organization strives to provide opportunities through which its nursing staff can advance in particular specialties. Such specialties include neurosurgery, cancer researching, and critical trauma care. (Heather, 2014). The Resource Management Department in Kaiser Permanente comprises individuals all striving towards provision of quality healthcare. Most of its members are derived from the medical practitioners i.e. the nurses, members of the health plan and the doctors (physicians). The physicians have the task of deciding on the main issues concerning resource management by considering the needs of the patients, needs of the health plan members as well as the coverage of the insurance schemes (Heather, 2014).The department heads incorporate then use of review criteria and other tools in making decisions. Sometimes results. The strategy will not make decisions concerning issues like hiring, termination, compensation or promotion based on the probability that the person will support the denials (Graetz, Reed, Shortell, Rundall, Bellows & Hsu, 2014). Kaiser Permanente has an excellent history of patient satisfaction due to the consistent feedback from the patients. The favourable feedback is as a result of its effective strategic plan that ensures patients are satisfied with its services. The strategy involves incorporation of various tools. For example, leadership that is focused towards meeting the needs of the patients promptly in line with the company’s goals and missions (Nudelman & Davoudi, 2014). The hospital unit managers also take notes of the patient’s comments and feedback, analyzes them and works on them. The hospitals make use of unit-based teams that engages front-line staff working on service and utilizes performance improvement methodology. Some of its successful projects as a result of its strategy include quietness at night, cleanliness, nurse communication and pain management. The central role of this approach is to foster an environment of communication between the staff and patients. A good communication environment encourages openness and it facilitates faster identification of problems and consequent resolution. Kaiser Permanente network organization’s primary goal is to ensure the access to healthcare for all the citizens of the United States at an affordable rate and in a customer-focused manner. The large structure of the Kaiser Permanente organization and stable financial environment enables it to live up to these goals. The combination of the capable Kaiser’s employees and the support of the modern technological advances, world-class chronic diseases treatment and state of the art care delivery make it a conspicuous force in the medical field. Its strategic policies are dedicated to caring innovations, clinical surveys and research, support for the community health, as well as health education for all and sundry. All in all, the network/organization is critical in the crucial field of healthcare in the United States. References Cohen, A., Klein, S., & McCarthy, D. (2014). Hill Physicians Medical Group: A Market-Driven Approach to Accountable Care for Commercially Insured Pat Graetz, I., Reed, M., Shortell, S. M., Rundall, T. G., Bellows, J., & Hsu, J. (2014). The next step towards making use meaningful: electronic information exchange and care coordination across clinicians and delivery sites. Medical care, 52(12), 1037-1041. Hether, H. J. (2014). Dialogic communication in the health care context: A case study of Kaiser Permanentes social media practices. Public Relations Review,40(5), 856-858. Jaffe, M., Sidney, S., & Young, J. D. (2014). The Kaiser Permanente Northern California Hypertension Project 2001-2012: How an integrated care delivery system increased and maintained blood pressure control rates from 44% to 86% in 11 years. Journal of the American Society of Hypertension, 8(4), e11. McCarthy, D., Mueller, K., & Wrenn, J. (2009). Kaiser Permanente: Bridging the quality divide with integrated practice, group accountability, and health information technology. New York: Commonwealth Fund. Nudelman, J., & Davoudi, M. (2014, November). Designing and planning strategies to address community health needs: Lessons learned from Kaiser Permanente. In 142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15-November 19, 2014). APHA. Read More