Assignment Description
Please read the scenario below, and then answer the questions that follow in a 3-page analysis. The questions will guide your analysis of the situation, but they will need to be presented as part of the report prepared by the UCH leadership team.
Scenario:
Overall Experience: Managing Change in a Healthcare Organization
The new alliance between United Medical and Mucho County hospitals must be managed effectively to ensure mutual benefits. The name was changed to Universal Community Hospital (UCH), signifying diversity in care and a global community. It also provides a clear vision and direction for the new organization. The new UCH leadership recognizes that true change must first start with leadership. Any meaningful change must be addressed using an institutional instead of a piecemeal approach. The leadership team began taking proactive measures by conducting a situational analysis to examine its internal environment. The UCH leadership team realized that there was a need to do the following:
1. Recruit for new roles, which helps to bring in experts from various disciplines and to train employees in their new roles
2. Train existing employees in their new or previous roles in evidence-based practices and encourage interdisciplinary teamwork
3. Implement new performance goals for each department in the hospitals
4. Optimize processes and operations across existing and new entities within the hospital system
5. Ensure and sustain employee engagement in times of change
6. Develop leaders for tomorrow
7. Add “Excellence in caregiving” to their existing mission statement
These structures were put in place gradually based on expert advice and survey data. The new leadership team conducted a SWOT analysis, which examined the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for improvement, and threats facing the new organization’s brand in the market. The new organization positioned itself strategically through product differentiation, cost leadership, and value creation within the market. It diversified its services and operations and ventured into other areas of care, including long-term care, hospice, and rehabilitation services. This move created hyper-competition among providers in the area. In less than 3 years, UCH began to enjoy the benefits of strategic planning. Adopting a philosophy of putting the patient first and employing three main objectives of tactics, capacity, and vision moved UCH forward. As a result of these changes, UCH became very competitive and began outperforming its competitors in the market.
Use the scenario to answer the following questions.
1. Assume that one of the polls conducted by the United Medical and Mucho County staff revealed the following results: Employees disengaged was 37% higher, staff absenteeism was 49%, and there were 40% more accidents and 60% more errors on the job. Over time, this translated into 18% lower productivity, 16% lower profitability, 37% lower job growth, and 65% lower share price. This type of behavior impacts the entire organization and must be corrected accordingly. What organizational problem fixing approach is most beneficial in addressing these issues?
2. The authors of Achieving Service Excellence: Strategies for Health Care argued that “providing an excellent health care experience is simple.” This is the thinking of UCH’s management staff. What statement represents excellence in caregiving from the perspective of the authors and management of UCH?
3. UCH recognized the importance of interdisciplinary teams. The purpose of the interdisciplinary team is to foster regular, structured, and expert communication among health professionals from different disciplines to establish, prioritize, and achieve patient treatment goals. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using interdisciplinary teams?
4. The management of UCH recognized that true change must first start with what factor?
5. The management decided on a name change for the organization to Universal Community Hospital (UCH) System. What was the idea behind the name change?
6. The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) discovered that nearly 80% of the practices that it identified as “better performing” used patient satisfaction surveys. This means that high performers were more likely to survey their patients, and did so more frequently compared to other practices. What could be the benefit of patient satisfaction surveys in managing healthcare organizations?
7. One of the proactive roles of the new management was to develop leaders for tomorrow. What was the essence for doing this or taking this proactive role?
8. The management of UCH conducted a SWOT analysis to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the organization after a few months. It realized that situational analysis must be done, which starts with examining the internal environment of the hospital system. What should be considered part of a hospital’s internal environment?
9. The model below represents Porter’s generic competitive strategies, which could be applied to UCH’s business strategy if it wants to remain competitive and position itself well in the market. Cost leadership suggests a focus on maintaining low costs, and differentiation focuses on providing a unique or different product or service to the customer. The application of the focus (3a and 3b) suggests that the focus will also be a niche market with special needs. What strategy within Porter’s generic competitive strategy model for a broader target did UCH employ?
10. Businesses, including healthcare organizations, have entered a new era of hyper-competition, where advantages are continually being created and destroyed through strategic maneuvering. The new competitive model below reflects the dynamic nature of advantage creation, requiring seven forms of know-how based on three objectives. What are these objectives?
(“Strategy in the era of hypercompetition,” 2021)
11. From the scenario, you observed that by merging and forming a strategic alliance, UCH has become very competitive, resulting in hyper-competition among providers in the community. What best describes hyper-competition among providers?
12. The merger resulting in the creation of UCH led to increased capacity. In the scenario above, how did UCH show increased capacity?
Submitting your assignment in APA format means, at a minimum, you will need the following:
• Title page: Remember the running head. The title should be in all capitals.
• Length: 3 pages minimum
• Body: This begins on the page following the title page and abstract page and must be double-spaced (be careful not to triple- or quadruple-space between paragraphs). The typeface should be 12-pt. Times Roman or 12-pt. Courier in regular black type. Do not use color, bold type, or italics, except as required for APA-level headings and references. The deliverable length of the body of your paper for this assignment is 3 pages. In-body academic citations to support your decisions and analysis are required. A variety of academic sources is encouraged.
Reference page: References that align with your in-body academic sources are listed on the final page of your paper. The references must be in APA format using appropriate spacing, hanging indent, italics, and uppercase and lowercase usage as appropriate for the type of resource used. Remember, the Reference page is not a bibliography but a further listing of the abbreviated in-body citations used in the paper. Every referenced item must have a corresponding in-body citation.
