Managing Healthcare Organizations - Essay Example

Managing Health Care Organizations Insert Insert Insert 03 September Introduction Health care organizations have been under-developing or providing poor health services in the past years. A major reason for this is lack of proper management. Health care administrators in these organizations have not been able to use strategic planning, performance improvement, and information system effectively to facilitate delivery of quality health care. This paper represents a proposal for an investigation to be done on the issue of management of health care. The aim of this investigation would be to identify ways in which health care organizations administrators could improve their management competencies. This is because health care organizations are dynamic and thus they experience changes that are rapid, complex, and discontinuous from time to time (Swayne, Duncan, & Ginter, 2006). This makes the people involved in its management to require high degree of leadership skills. The investigations would have the capacity to improve this and thus improve management of these organizations. Statement of the issue to be investigate The issue to be investigated in this research is management of health care organizations. This encompasses issues like strategic planning, operational planning, and tactical planning. Health care organizations face a form of competition that could only be addresses using a systematic fashion (Moseley, 2009). The systematic fashion could be achieved through coordination of strategic planning, operational planning, and tactical planning. Issues that would be investigated by research proposed by this paper will aim at improving these three aspects of management and their coordination. Impact of not investigating this issue would be very great since it would make it difficult to improve management of healthcare organizations. Moreover, it would make improvement of these aspects of management too hard. As a result, health care organizations administrator would be able to use their leadership position and capability to interrelate strategic planning, performance improvement, and information system to provision of quality health care. Therefore, the profitability and survival of health care organizations in their respective markets would be greatly reduced. Research sources The research topic, which to be investigated in the proposed research, is improvement of health care organization management. Various specific researches have been undertaken on this research topic. Some of them have been trying to identify the factors that might be hindering proper management of these organizations. Others have been trying to investigate the impact of poor management of these organizations on their service delivery. Moreover, we have those that relate management in other business sectors with health care organization management. Most of these researches have been able to reveal ways that could be used to improve management of health care organizations. Another research undertaken on this research topic is a research on evidence-based management. Due to complexity in the management of health care organization, they require evidence-based management. In this management approach, decisions are made based on research finding or decisions from previous research. The research design used in this article is quantitative and the research is undertaken in form of a survey. In this research, a sample selected from health organizations in the United Kingdom is used to draw conclusions about the whole United Kingdom. The variable in this research that would be crucial in our research undertaking would be intervention of other medical professions in the management process of health care organizations (Walshe & Rundall, 2012). This is because this would assist in identifying whether the interventions have positively influenced management of these organizations. Another research undertaken on this research topic is a research on what health organization administrators could learn from retail outlets like Wal-Mart. This research article relates the health sector with other business sectors. The most important point on this research is similarity between the medical sector and the other business sectors. Another important point is the differences between health sector and other sectors. This research does not have many variables that could be important in our research. The only variable that would be important in our research is the information needed in decision-making. According to Nobel (2011), health care is information intensive but uses information technology the least. This means that any decision made should involve a lot of information but use less information technology. The other research undertaken on this research topic is the application of knowledge and processes in managing health care organizations. This research uses a qualitative research design. The reason for this is that it uses a comparative form of analysis and does not have any form of numerical data. One of the most important points in this article is medical knowledge processes management as an essential strategic asset for sustained increase in health care organization performance (Stefanelli, 2004). Another important point is the services that health information system should provide to enhance collaboration between patients and health professions (Stefanelli, 2004). Variables in this research article that would be of importance in our research are the nature of medical knowledge and knowledge creation process, and social characteristics of knowledge creation process. This topic has several key elements. One of these key elements is the instructional element. Decisions are passed from the key decision makers to other people in leadership positions in this way. Health care organizations are always huge organizations that involve several people. There are those who respond to changes, those who induce changes, and those who manage changes (Kohn, 2012). This indicates that delivering of instructions must be involved in the process of management of these organizations. Hence, this is the reason why instruction becomes part of management of health care organizations. Another key element of this research topic is the legal element. This is what the law requires to be done concerning the management of health care organizations. Health organizations should prevent, respond to, and rapidly recover from its threats (NGHSP, 2012). This raises the need for the government and other stakeholders to design means of protecting individuals involved with health care organizations. They do this by formulating laws and regulations that must be followed by health care professions. These laws and regulations play a very important role in the operation and management of health care organizations. As a result, management of health care organizations has a strong legal element that determines the minimum requirements for a person to become a key decision-maker in a health care environment. The other element of the research topic that would be very crucial for our research is the ethical issues. Ethical element of health care set-up customary focuses on health care professionals rather than the organization (Agich, 2007). However, an organization also could be ethical. An organization is regarded as ethical if it has values, ideologies and practices that it requires each of its members to observe (Butts, 2012). Health care organizations consist of different types of professionals. They also have values, ideologies, and practices that must be observed by each of its professionals. Key decision-makers and those in leadership positions are expected to have a higher degree of ethical values compared to other professionals. Therefore, ethical issues are a key element on the identified research topic. One of the research articles used for this research is ‘Attention Medical Shoppers: What Health Care Can Learn from Walmart and Amazon. This article is important for this specific research since it contains information on strategies used by retail outlets that could be important to the health care organization. The article is recent since it was published only one year ago and Carmen Nobel, who is a popular researcher, authors it. The findings on this research indicate that health care emphasizes on goods rather than good services (Nobel, 2011). This would affect my research since it is a reason why the managements of these organizations do not achieve improvement in services delivery. Another research article that would be used for this research would be ‘Knowledge and Process management in Health Care Organizations. This article was written by stefanelli M. and reviewed on the national institute of health. Although this article was written several years back, it contains information that would be very essential for the identified research topic. This includes information about how to integrate medical informatics on the operations of health care organizations (Stefanelli, 2004). This could improve management of this institutions. The other article that would be of use in the research is ‘Evidence-based Management: From Theory to Practice in Health Care’. Kieran Walshe and Thomas Rundall wrote this article. Kieran Walshe is a well-known researcher at University of Birmingham while Thomas Rundall is a researcher at the University of California. The article is recent since it was published at the beginning of this year (2012). Moreover, it is detailed and very relevant to the research topic. One of the most important information in this article is information on applicability of the ideas of evidence-based practice to health care management (Walshe & Rundall, 2012). This might result to an improved decision-making in the health care organizations. Conclusion In this research, we have investigated ways that could be used by health care organizations administrators to improve their leadership capability. Improving this capability would enhance the management of health care organization. In this investigation, research articles written by other authors are used as the main source of information. These sources of information propose three major improvements on the management of health care organizations. These improvements are use of evidence-based practice, use of knowledge and process management, and use some of the tactics used by major retail outlets. However, we also found out that there are several key elements associated with the research topic. These key elements have influence on this research topic and thus they should not be neglected. Moreover, most of the articles used in this investigation are recent, relevant, and detailed. As a result, they have the capability to yield reliable results; therefore, we can conclude that the three means of improving management of these organizations could yield required results. References Agich, G. J. (2007). Health Care Organization Responsibility for Quality Improvement. Garrison, NY: The Hastings Centre. Butts, J. B. (2012). Ethics in Organizations and Leadership. Burlington MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Kohn, M. S. (2012). Rapid Change in Healthcare Organizations. Amherst, MA: HRD Press. Moseley, G. B. (2009). Managing Health Care Business Strategy. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. NGHSP. (2012). Healthcare Preparedness Capabilities. Retrieved from: http://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/planning/hpp/reports/Documents/capabilities.pdf. On 1 September 2012. Nobel, C. (2011). Attention Medical Shoppers: What Health Care Can Learn from Walmart and Amazon. Harvard Business School. Retrieved from: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6658.html. On 1 September 2012. Stefanelli, M. (2004). Knowledge and Process Management in Health Care Organizations. Methods inf med, 43(5), 525-35. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15702214 Swayne, L. E., Duncan, W. J., & Ginter, P. M. (2006). Strategic Management of Health Care Organization. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Walshe, K., & Rundall, T. G. (2012). Evidence-based Management: From Theory to Practice in Health Care. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Read More