Healthcare and Business Goals - Essay Example

Health care managers are appointed to positions of authority in order to shape the organization by making important decisions (The Hastings center, 2012). On a daily basis, they make and coordinate decisions on recruitment and development of staff, service addition or reduction, allocation and utilization of financial resources, and acquisition of equipment and technology. Their role is to ensure that patients and clients receive appropriate services effectively and timely while focusing on achievement of performance targets (Caldwell, Brexler and Gillem, 2000).

Health care services tend to be personal in nature, and its impact tends to be felt by the providers and recipients at a point of delivery. Decisions made by hospital managers reflect on ethical and moral values of the administration since they are subjective in nature and have a key effect on the wellbeing of patients, employees, taxpayers and community, individually or collectively (Ache.org, 2012). The decisions of managers affect people directly or indirectly in both predictable and unpredictable ways and sometimes raise questions of fairness.

For example, a hospital may buy equipment at a premium price, but fail to raise wages of personnel to desirable levels. In a different situation, a hospital can be challenged to rationalize the use of money from patients to pay employees whose work is substandard. In yet another case, expenses may rise, and the administration may want to cut budgets of some departments, whatever decision is made, certain patients are bound to be affected (Wheatley, 2006). It is important for the manager to prioritise the obligation to serve patients effectively.

Ethical issues such as those highlighted above should be addressed effectively as negligence leads to errors and potentially costly decisions that are harmful to patients, staff, the organization and the community. Where staff is affected negatively by such decisions; it can result in distress which is known to cause professional burn out and staff turnover (Owen, 1990). The management of a health care organization has the duty to nurture a healthy ethical environment (Morrison, 2011). Good ethics improve employee morale, enhance productivity and improve efficiency of the organization.

This in turn, improves customer satisfaction and employee retention. There is a clear link between ethics and quality, a health care organization that fails to meet established ethical bench marks, and standards is not likely to deliver high-quality health care. Conversely, institutions that fail to meet minimum quality standards raise ethical concerns with stake holders (Morrison, 2011). A review of practices in the top ranked health care organizations Managers of health care institutions must Endeavour to adopt quality and system improvement programmes in order to improve care delivery and spread new practices across the system.

The transformation process requires a clear and sustained strategy and takes time to implement. For example, Henry Ford Health System, a leading health care institution in excellence has been dedicated to quality improvement and achieving strong financial performance for over 20 years. It has sought to put patients first by exploring needs, improving care and overcoming conflicts between its employees. Therefore, strong leadership is critical to maintaining unwavering focus on improving systems and outcomes