Conflict Resolution at General Hospital - Essay Example

The General Hospital opened its doors in 1968 to provide quality medical care to the community around it and beyond. At first, gradual growth resulted to an increased number of patients and hospital activity in general. Recently, however, there was a sharp decline in patient occupancy from 90 percent to 60 percent. The hospital chief executive officer (CEO), Mike Hammer, believed that physicians played a significant role in this decline by having their allegiance to their profession rather than to the hospital.

In his opinion, the physicians did not consider the economic repercussions of their medical practice; neither did they care about the situation in which they were placing the hospital. In this respect, the CEO used various conflict resolution techniques to solve the stalemate between the hospital and its employees, and among the employees. At first, the CEO attempted to communicate his concerns to physicians through Dr. Mark Williams, Director of Medicine, to no avail. Later on, he had to cut costs by computerization of hospital procedures resulting in firing of a highly efficient EKG reader, Dr.

James Boyer, and replacing him with a non-satisfactory computerized EKG reading system. This infuriated the physicians as not only was one of them fired, but also the computerized system was implemented without their consent or consultation. Hammer refused to take responsibility and his Chief Operations Officer (COO), Marge Harding, who implemented the system without consultations, refused to attend meetings with physicians to avoid meeting them and explaining her policies. This is the first approach that the CEO took by organizing a meeting with the Director of Medicine who was in charge of the physicians.

The intention was to have each party air its views on the situation at hand and come to an agreement that would be