Healthcare managers occasionally encounter situations that require them to make critical decisions in healthcare facilities. Decision-making is considered a complicated affair that may involve clinical and non-clinical situations. Multiple factors such as financial resources, treatment options, ethics, quality, and legal aspects are some requirements that a health manager must consider before deciding the appropriate action that should be executed. Healthcare management comprises all complete control of a healthcare facility by ensuring everything is done appropriately, including budget, objectives, and the community’s needs. With the responsibility to oversee various healthcare system functions, healthcare managers must ensure quality, client needs, profitability, ethics, and other factors are balanced for positive outcomes.
As a healthcare manager, decisions must be guided by different factors, including internal and external elements. Examples of external considerations include resources, impacts, and actions that affect the organization, although they happen to the company’s internal environment. In a healthcare facility, such aspects include community needs, population characteristics, and reimbursements from insurance and government plans such as Medicare and Medicaid (Guo, 2020). Internal factors include care quality, financial performance, and appropriate and adequate staffing.
One situation requiring making a decision is when stakeholders want ethics and quality to be disregarded to earn more profits. Such a situation may include hiring less qualified staff and avoiding the purchase of technological devices that will cost a large budget. Currently, anything legal may not be ethical, including privacy and confidentiality issues in healthcare. It is ineffective to focus on profits without considering the long-term effects of decisions made today (Onar et al., 2018). It is always important to consider the stakeholders’ demands and balance them with quality of care and ethical standards to avoid legal litigations and failure to establish the basis for long-term success.
A second situation would be when required to solve an issue where the quality of care has been declining, and there are several complaints from the government, consumers, and insurers. Different groups can demand acceptable standards of care from healthcare facilities. In this case, I will consider the standards expected by stakeholders, the government, patient satisfaction, and other issues that affect the quality of care. Additionally, applying evidence-based knowledge will avoid financial losses and other errors that may compromise the facilities’ success in providing quality care (Guo, 2020). Any solution based on verified data and evidence will ensure that trial and error methods are not implemented with proper proof of probable success. Measures should be established to reduce medical errors and collect feedback from clients to improve services.
After a scenario that can demand a solution is when there are complaints due to rising healthcare costs that may hinder access to care by patients. As a healthcare manager, I will ensure the facility’s budget challenges are addressed and the costs managed considering the community’s needs. Additionally, the stakeholder’s needs and ethics should also be considered in ensuring the cost is balanced with other important factors.
Healthcare managers have the authority to decide what affects the entire success of activities in a healthcare facility. Several factors must be considered and effectively analyzed to ensure the critical decisions are effective. These factors include ethical standards, facility budget, care quality, stakeholders’ demands, and community needs. Additionally, the utilization of evidence-based knowledge should be a key element in decision-making to ensure appropriate actions are taken to solve issues.
References
Guo, K. L. (2020). Decide: A decision-making model for more effective decision-making by health care managers. The health care manager, 39(3), 133-141. Web.
Onar, S. C., Oztaysi, B., & Kahraman, C. (2018). A comprehensive survey on healthcare management. Operations Research Applications in Health Care Management. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 23-51.