Blueslopes Private Hospital is one of the leading privately-operated healthcare facilities in Australia. The Sydney-based organization was started in 2010 and boasts substantial growth over the years. The facility is known for managing rare conditions such as cancer and other chronic issues affecting humanity. Blueslopes has over one thousand employees, comprising nurses, physicians, specialists, managers, and subordinate staff. The entity intends to expand its care delivery ability by establishing an intensive five years strategy that will aid in sealing existing issues and promoting opportunities’ utilization. The present work thus presents the facility’s comprehensive plan for 2022 to 2027.
Evaluation of the Strategic Successes and Failures over the Past Five Years
The Blueslopes Private Hospital plays a significant role in meeting the healthcare needs of citizens within the Sydney region and entire Australia. The facility offers complimentary private care services that many people lack in public hospitals. Blueslopes’ success comes from several aspects, including its management committee’s yearly review of the facility’s performance. As such, the previous evaluation by the committee identified several issues that need attention for adequate growth and improvement of care quality and safety promotion. The entity also aims to realize improvement in financial performance via the five-year strategic plan. The hospital currently operates with a new Chief Executive officer appointed in December 2019, who played a central role in the entity’s operations during the pandemic. Within the year plus expanse, the hospital registers noteworthy progress in the following area:
- Improvement of the hospital’s efficiency through staff mix transformation and theatre utilization promotion.
- Growth in medical services delivery by attracting more patients and specialists.
- Redevelopment of the hospital to acquire crucial accreditation that has been missing for a while.
- Growth in the hospital’s valuation and acceptance among the Sydney and Australian community.
- Development of a robust partnership platform that makes patient transfer process among several hospitals, both private and public, possible.
Remarkably, the Blueslopes Private Hospital cherishes the victory in drawing an increasing number of visiting specialists and intern students from renowned medical training institutions in the nation. The success promises to boost the facility’s quality of care rendered to patients and grow the institution’s revenue. Moreover, the development makes it possible for more patients to acquire the care they miss locally without traveling to other areas within or outside the country. Blueslopes’ leading purpose is to impact lives, making this latter achievement more crucial.
Assessment of Key Strategic Issues
The healthcare sector experiences significantly dynamic issues like the other industries. Technology, globalization, connectivity, worsening terminal illness cases, business model changes, and the present-day pandemic constitute some of the most critical aspects that today’s hospitals need to manage for a better tomorrow. Some of the most notable transformation facets impacting the hospital, as identified by the Blueslopes’ governance, are as below:
- Diminishing affordability of private health coverage and a rise in the cost of care for those opting for the private hospitals’ services.
- Increasing consumer expectation for more value due to the rise in cost.
- Increased focus on the neglected minorities through improved remote access.
- More cognizant patients with increased engagement in all the levels of their health journey.
- Patients with increased knowledge of their rights and high expectations of high-quality services.
- Increased focus on hospitals and medics’ accountability.
- The rise in home-based care.
- The rise in the aging population with higher care needs.
- Increased utilization of technology in care delivery.
- The rise in medical care skills among medics, due to the changing nature of health conditions.
- New government policies regulating healthcare costs.
- The emergence of global pandemics.
- Growing need for private hospitals’ collaboration to improve the quality of care and the entities’ profitability while taking care of the patients’ dwindling economic conditions.
Blueslopes Private Hospital’s Vision Statement
The facility’s vision is: Affordable quality health to all.
Proposal for an Appropriate Business Model
The Blueslopes Private Hospital intends to become a business leader in the quality care delivery line within Australia and the world. The organization currently serves over one million patients each year. Individual employees provide a majority of the care delivery services, thus increasing the facility’s expenses significantly, as reiterated by Lui et al. (2022). Furthermore, Blueslopes exhibits a substantially minimal utilization of technology. For example, the facility’s primary technological adoption concerns the utilization of electronic medical data storage, which aids medics in delivering better care (Karim & Gide, 2018). However, the hospital’s staff goes home very tired most of the days due to the hospital’s busy schedule. The facility serves as a crucial referral center for most small clinics and other hospitals, including public facilities, thus making its workload intensive.
The desire to offer better care through realizing lean processes and agile organization significantly informs the current strategic plan. The Blueslopes’ primary concern is to ensure an easy flow of operations, delivery of the best possible care, and provision of the best work environment in the nation. The facility also yearns to be a market leader in research activities and treatment of critical illnesses like cancer, diabetes, and epidemics such as COVID-19. Such goals are not realizable under the present condition, thus informing the move to set a five-year plan to align the facility to its future plans.
Definition of Success during the Next Five Years
The Blueslopes Private Hospital has clear targets that will define success within the five years under the strategic plan. For example, the facility wants to become a vibrant part of the integrated system of the Sydney healthcare scheme that involves the collaboration of all private and public health facilities in the area. The Blueslopes hospital yearns to be the facility of choice for patients and specialists within Sydney, Australia, and beyond. The facility also purposes to have superior support and engagement with the Sydney community and healthcare facilities. Having ground-breaking health delivery and operating in a socially and culturally sensitive manner will depict the facility’s achievement. Another crucial mark of success within the set period will be establishing an all-inclusive medical coverage with conventional associations to multidisciplinary players.
One more sign of success over the period will involve treating all patients with exceptional outcomes, from those exhibiting slight to the most intricate of medical problems. The Blueslopes Private Hospital intends to establish and equip contemporary theatres usable for diverse medical conditions by the many specialists in the facility to offer exceptional quality of care. Furthermore, the theatres will serve as research centers for the different critical medical issues, thus helping the nation and the world to realize improved services and quality of life. The hospital’s cancer and COVID-19 centers will also be able to accommodate and treat more people from within and without the nation, with better results courtesy of the plan’s implementation. Similarly, helping patients, especially the minorities, advocate for their rights to care and giving them access to quality services will further constitute critical success. The Blueslopes intends to provide care to the minority patients’ homes and apply technology to boost the patients’ quality of life as part of the strategic plan’s success.
Lastly, making the facility’s services profitable, reliable, and sustainable will be a critical measure of the plans’ success. The Blueslopes Private Hospital requires finances to expand and meet its many goals regarding care delivery improvement. Acquiring the money through quality treatment of customers and adopting technology to cut unnecessary costs will enable the facility to re-invest and finance the research and care improvement initiatives (Bolton et al., 2020). Becoming a vibrant member of the Sydney Healthcare Scheme with significant acceptance and trust among the community members will also boost the facility’s preference among the community. The achievement will thus allow the hospital to recruit and reward its employees well to realize other primary goals. Still, having more healthcare services provided at patients’ homes will be a milestone to celebrate. The achievement will imply the strategic plan’s success in bridging the healthcare access gap between the haves and have-nots in society.
Strategic Objectives 2022-2027
Areas of Focus
The Blueslopes Private Hospital intends to invest in the following five strategies to realize its mission, vision, and planned success:
- Develop the existing and emerging health workforce
- Strengthen relationship with the Sydney Healthcare Scheme
- Expand cancer, diabetes, and COVID-19 care services and facilities
- Promote the hospital within and outside Sydney
- Adopt technology to improve quality of care and ease workforce burden
Strategy 1: Develop the Existing and Emerging Health Workforce
Key Activities
- Establish an integrated healthcare staff recruitment plan with the possibility of ‘visa’ skilled specialists and a graduate recruitment scheme.
- Upskilling current medics through collaboration with Sydney’s research and other training institutions.
- Development of more appealing recruitment and retention plans for talents.
Strategy 2: Strengthen Relationship with the Sydney Healthcare Fraternity
Key Activities
- Signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Sydney Healthcare Scheme
- Offer an opportunity to share the facility’s research and care facilities to promote collaboration and improve the quality of care.
- Establish a scheme to share specialists with the interested partners.
- Work with the other partners to establish a Clinical Review Committee to foresee the activities of the shared scheme and the quality of care under the collaboration.
Strategy 3: Expand Cancer, Diabetes, and COVID-19 Care Services and Facilities
Key Activities
- Establish more accommodation facilities for patients and carers.
- Work with the Sydney Healthcare Scheme to standardize the handling and care rendered to persons suffering from severe conditions.
- Apply research to design better care practices to promote recovery and quality of life.
Strategy 4: Promote the Hospital within and outside Sydney
Establish a marketing blueprint that:
- Takes services to the needy and minorities within and without Sydney.
- Converts the facility’s treatment operations into a cause.
- Promotes expansion to other locations.
- Facilitates the delivery of inclusive care to all people regardless of their conditions.
Strategy 5: Adopt Technology to improve Quality of Care and Ease Workforce Burden
Key Activities
- Adopt AI technology to aid medics offer a better quality of care.
- Utilize AI to offer virtual care to patients living far from the facility.
- Utilize AI to prevent errors in care delivery.
- Use AI to promote collaboration among partners in the Sydney Healthcare Scheme.
References
Bolton, P., Musca, X., & Samama, F. (2020). Global public‐private investment partnerships: A financing innovation with positive social impact. Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 32(2), 31–41. Web.
Karim, S., & Gide, E. (2018). The use of interactive mobile technology to improve the quality of health care services in private and public hospitals in Australia. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies, 12(6), 4–18. Web.
Lui, J. N. M., Andres, E. B., & Johnston, J. M. (2022). Does seasonal influenza related hospital occupancy surge impact hospital staff sickness presenteeism and productivity costs? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(2). Web.