Introduction
Communicating to a few key employees working in City Hospital, I managed to become familiar with the most important problems in each department and the proposed methods that could help to ameliorate the situation. There were a few strategies presented by the specialists and it is possible to regard each of them as quite good. Nevertheless, if I were to choose only one of them, I would prefer to pay increased attention to propositions made by the Chief of Operations. According to her, the situation in the hospital is challenging because of the significant drop in admissions. These challenges may be a result of an increased competition connected to the fact that there are many twenty-four-hour medical centers and clinics that have opened recently.
The most important problem connected to the situation is that these centers have enough resources to be able to provide people with assistance and care in a more effective way. For instance, their patients do not have to wait for a long time to receive treatment that remains the important factor connected to satisfaction (Bleustein, Rothschild, Valen, Valatis, Schweitzer, & Jones, 2014). At the same time, patients in City Hospital have to wait because there is a lack of personnel. Many specialists will have to leave the hospital in order to receive higher salaries and be more appreciated by the employers (Hijazi, 2015). At the same time, the competitors of City Hospital are also able to deliver their services at a lower price, and this is why many patients tend to choose them. Discussing the measures that can be taken in order to address the challenges, the Chief of Operations proposes to shut down a few departments of the hospital or reorganize them.
Main body
I suppose that the decisions proposed by the Chief of Operations are good enough to be implemented in order to provide the patients with better conditions. Therefore, I would not prefer to create another strategy. The primary reason why I suppose this strategy to be the best one is connected to the fact that these measures may increase the quality of treatment. I think that the proposed operation plan is quite good because it can help to provide the patients with better care. Moreover, by shutting down certain departments (ones that require the most expensive equipment but remain the least effective), the hospital can save money and then spend it on increasing the quality of other services and buying necessary diagnostic and clinical equipment for other departments. Personally, I believe that high quality of medical services should remain the most important thing for the hospital, and this is why shutting down or reorganizing some of the departments may be a good decision. According to the described strategy, the strengths are connected to patients’ high satisfaction level and the weaknesses lie in the fact that the treatment is more expensive than in other clinics. As for threats, the company may lose many of its clients due to increased competition and the opportunities are connected to cutting costs with the help of reorganization.
Conclusion
As for additional information that can help to choose the best strategy, I believe that it is necessary to talk to the patients in order to define if there are any important problems that bother them and thoroughly study the information on departments’ effectiveness in order to analyze possible consequences of reorganization. Furthermore, it would be helpful to get more detailed information on other strategies in order to compare risks and benefits.
References
Bleustein, C., Rothschild, D. B., Valen, A., Valatis, E., Schweitzer, L., & Jones, R. (2014). Wait times, patient satisfaction scores, and the perception of care. The American journal of managed care, 20(5), 393-400.
Hijazi, H. (2015). Managing hospital nurses during crisis: Receiving no salary for 4 months. International Journal for Human Caring, 19(4), 79-80.