Effective health care organizational leadership is required to ensure smooth operations during the process of hospital mergers or acquisitions (Longest & Darr, 2014). Such leadership is based on the knowledge of essential functions and components of health services management, including the function of organizing and universal design factors.
Leadership is recognized as behavior that guides people towards achieving a common objective. The main function of leadership is, therefore, to achieve a common objective, and a major component of leadership is cooperation (Page, 2004, p. 109). Organizing is essential in order to make people collaborate, and it is particularly true in a health care setting, where a number of people in different departments are to work together towards a common goal, providing high-quality patient care (Longest & Darr, 2014). This goal is also to be achieved in a constantly changing regulatory environment, where new laws and regulations which affect the health care industry are introduced every few years. Therefore, the challenges of leading and managing modern health care organizations include, but are not limited to:
- coordinating the work of various workgroups and personnel from different units, for example, clinicians, nurses, administrative personnel, committees, etc.;
- monitoring and optimizing operations management in order to improve the quality and efficacy of healthcare;
- achieving and maintaining a constant level of medical services quality by increasing standardization of patient care;
- facilitating and maintaining trust across the organization;
- actively managing the process of change.
As challenging as the management process is, it is particularly challenging during the process of organizational change, such as merging or acquisition. Proper management of the change process is vital to the initiative’s success. Organizational change is always met with some reaction from the employees, which can either be positive or help facilitate change or negative and hinder the change process. Therefore, for hospital management, it is of utmost importance to properly organize the process of change to ensure smooth operations. Proper organization during the change process requires management to create and maintain a formal structure, which should include the preferences of the personnel (Longest & Darr, 2014). An improper organization is likely to result in a slower merging or acquisition process, negative attitudes of workers towards reorganization, and generally sabotage the process of change. Proper organization during the acquisition process is based on the management’s ability to coordinate the work of different departments and provide staff with timely information about the reorganization process. During the acquisition process, the following three universal design factors are influenced the most:
- level of uncertainty in the work being done.
- degree of standardization of work;
- degree of interaction needed between managers and workers (Longest & Darr, 2014).
During the acquisition process, the level of uncertainty among employees rises due to the fact that work becomes more complex. The degree of standardization suffers during this process during the fact that different organizational policies are being merged, and new supervision policies are being established. The number of workers during the acquisition is likely to increase. This fact means that the interaction between hospital staff and managers is likely to increase due to the management’s involvement in the process of change and the fact that staff is likely to have numerous questions regarding the process of acquisition.
The reorganization process highlights the need of hospital management to efficiently organize the working process and understand the design factors which are influenced the most.
References
Longest, B., & Fache, K. (2014). Managing Health Services Organizations and Systems: Sixth Edition. Towson: Health Professions Press.
Page, A. (2004). Keeping Patients Safe: Transforming the Work Environment of Nurses. Web.