The Key Purpose of Niagara Health System - Essay Example

Running Head: Organizational Profile Organizational Profile [Institute’s Organizational Profile a) Overview The Niagara Health System (NHS) is the leading healthcare arrangement (Walshe & Smith, 2006) in Ontario, located at six sites including “Douglas Memorial Site, Niagara on the Lake site, Welland site, Greater Niagara General Site, St. Catharines Site, and Port Colborne Site” (Poss & Meeks, 2004)1. The key purpose of Niagara Health System (NHS) is to enhance the health results for Niagara. NHS develops the culture as well as environment to provide the high standard healthcare facilities and ascertain that the resources are utilized successfully to acquire the most favorable results for people as well as for society in general. NHS has implemented the Accreditation Canada classification of quality which is the level of quality; the level to which any healthcare facility fulfills patients’ requirements and goes beyond their expectations. This quality framework acts as the basis for quality enhancement at all the six sites and provides strategic coalitions for every divisions and service ensuring quality care. It includes formulating a yearly quality enhancement plan, assessing and controlling advancement in carrying out the work plan, and forwarding the outcomes of these activities to the relevant stakeholders. Requirements for healthcare facilities for the population of Niagara are distinctive and reliant on the determinants of health. Knowing these factors helps NHS to recognize the health condition of the people in addition to their continuing healthcare requirements (Klinger et al, 2013). It further ascertains that everyone has a positive experience of care. NHS operates within an integrated structure to ensure healthier environment and offers timely access to an extensive range of patient centric facilities and cure. It improves society’s welfare and healthcare provision by means of training, promotion and research efforts, and strives for incessant quality enhancement within healthcare facilities to face the challenges of varying requirements for health care. b) Environment According to the objectives of NHS, the protection of the environment is necessary for acquiring sustainable development to fulfill the existing requirements. It identifies that as a key employer as well as supplier of healthcare facilities, its actions have long term influence on the environment (Bartol et al., 2011). Niagara Health System recognizes its liability for the environment, and is dedicated towards conservation as well as protection of the environment (Cathcart et al., 2004). External environment of NHS incorporates financial stress, competition, performance assessment, and the accessibility of reasonably priced healthcare services. The determinants of prolific effectiveness within healthcare systems are reliant partially on the healthcare systems themselves and partially on these factors of external environment (Bowditch & Buono, 2008). The example of how external environment is influencing Niagara Health System can be taken from the steps it has taken in the field of energy conservation. Its St. Catharines Site decreases the utilization of clean water by more or less twenty percent by applying the plumbing fittings which are water efficient. It furthermore decreases the energy consumption level by more or less thirty percent in comparison with the typical design of hospitals. Also, the setting up of a building automation system manages as well as to assesses the building systems including “boilers, chillers and ventilation systems” (Hutchison et al, 2011). This building automation system ensures swift response to the building operative for temperature, flow of air and humidity levels all over the building to offer utmost relieve to the workers, patients and their visitors. Studies revealed that external environment surrounding the health service organizations have high level of ambiguity and instability within the market is rising considerably as a result of frequent alterations within the macro-environment. Another example of how the external environment influences NHS is of the last financial crisis which leads to the higher rate unemployment and the uninsured, which formed a political environment for the healthcare restructuring. The restructuring, alongside the aging population, is causing the significant rise in demands, needing information technology for healthcare services together with e-medical records as NHS has to modernize procedures and offer services competently to accommodate the needs. c) Organizational Structure Figure 1: Organizational Structure of Niagara Health System Organizational structure includes the way tasks are allocated and the formal coordinating systems along with interaction patterns. Three major components of organizational structural design are complexity, formalization, and centralization. Complexity is level of differentiation inside the organization. It incorporates the level of specialization or division of labor, levels within organizational hierarchy, and degree to which the organizational units are “dispersed geographically” (Pertusa-Ortega et al, 2010). Formalization is the extent to which a business depends on regulations and practices to direct the behavior of its workforce; and centralization is where the “locus of decision making ability lies” (Pertusa-Ortega et al, 2010). NHS has formed a system structure to incorporate services all along the range of healthcare facilities, optimizes synchronization, and cultivates efficient partnerships; for instance, centralized structures that have integrated objectives as well as strategic concerns, which are subsequently dispersed via networks responsible for the execution of those concerns on the local level, in a way that reveals domestic requirements and perspective (Kagoma et al, 2011). Niagara Health System also ensures proper incorporation - vertical as well as horizontal (Duffield & Stein-Parbury, 1992) - in order to completely attain incorporated health care provision facilities. Niagara Health System has experienced major development, and anticipates this inner development to carry on. Moreover, NHS is looking for fresh growth as well as expansion via tactical acquisitions, keeping in view the latest modifications within the healthcare sector. It has also identified that such development needs a set of services that could control the existing internal expansion (Bartol et al., 2011). NHS has undergone key alterations within its core structure. These alterations influences who makes decisions concerning the healthcare facilities, the way these facilities are “commissioned” (Sarma et al, 2010), and the way funds are utilized and objectives are met. Acting in accordance with the healthcare regulation, the NHS management is in charge for making recommendations regarding the requirements of the public for healthcare facilities and the resources necessary to fulfill those requirements. It is also responsible for handling as well as developing the healthcare facilities and supporting, facilitating and collaborating in learning and training of people involved in any of its six sites or any other related services. To accomplish this task efficiently, NHS has implemented an operational structure controlled by the Chief Executive. For NHS, people are major factor in the delivery of its services and this concept goes beyond offering patients the most favorable healthcare facilities, even though that is constantly the top priority. It as well acknowledges the significance of having a caring and considerate approach, as well as mutual communication, which is crucial for knowing and fulfilling the requirements of patients. In addition, NHS believes that workers who have easy access to information, who gets support from organizational management and are provided with sufficient resources to carry out the assigned task; and who have opportunities for individual as well as occupational growth are empowered to contribute to attaining organizational objectives. This empowerment may originate from within, cooperatively as in “work groups” (Guttmann et al, 2010), or from the operational environment. Workers who are empowered dominate their practice and take active part in decision making process (Robbins & Barnwell, 2006), hence reinforcing a professional practice structure along with supporting positive patient care results. The organizational structure of Niagara Health System further ensures shared governance, which supports mutual decision making as well as collective responsibility. There are a number of positive outcomes of this approach, together with improved level of satisfaction as well as retention and a more motivated staff, working towards organizational objectives. Organizational structures where shared governance is tightly embedded support dynamic participation of frontline workforce in the design of a professional practice model that supports superior patient care results. References Bartol, K., Tein, M., Matthews, G., Sharma, B. & Scott-Ladd, B. (2011). Management: A Pacific Rim Focus (6th ed.). Sydney: McGraw- Hill. Bowditch, J. L., & Buono, A. F. (2008). A Primer on Organizational Behavior (6th ed.). New York: Wiley. Cathcart, D., Jeska, S., Karnas, J., Miller, S., Pechakecek, J., & Rheault, L. (2004). Span of control matters. Journal of Nursing Administration, 34(6), 395-399. Duffield, C., & Stein-Parbury, J. (1992). Organisational structures and their effects on communication. In C. Cuthbert, J. Duffield & M. 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