Huntington Hospital (HH) faced management challenges that influenced its productivity. Based on employee comments, the previous management did not trust staff members, and with a poor communication channel in the hospital, there was no cohesive working relationship. The level of trust in the hospital was low, and it translated to an overall sense of anxiety at the facility. With the low trust levels, miscommunications, and confusion, the management’s inability to effectively control factors that hindered performance resulted in an atmosphere where ideas were not entertained. Therefore, attention was lost to unnecessary operation issues like committing to working on time (Study Case OB-91(A), 2015). With commercial insurance responsible for the generation of approximately 55 percent of the revenues collected at the billing department, the attendance policy at the organization caused every employee to work on time to achieve cash goals.
The organization’s policies did not address the issue but hindered every opportunity to resolve poor communication between the management and the employees. Focusing on attendance instead of how to streamline communication and rebuild the broken trust at the facility resulted in confusion and poor performance by the employees. However, with the change in management, Markey’s new responsibility was to restore employee faith in the organization and rebuild their innovativeness toward achieving a comfortable working environment (Study Case OB-91(A), 2015). Markey started changing the management style relative to how operations would be handled by listening to employees and changing the attendance policy.
Markey’s approach to the challenges the employees face aligns with HH’s mission and vision in a way that attention is focused on performance. Markey first focuses on conversations with the employees to rebuild their trust in the management to achieve this. Moreover, by encouraging the subordinates to share their ideas, Markey restores the sense of trust lost in the previous management. The purpose of every healthcare organization is to improve service delivery, and with this, Markey plans to implement an Electronic Health Record (EHR) to streamline workflow at the facility. However, due to previous experience, Markey understands full implementation might not be possible, and therefore, through consultants, the aim becomes to help establish credibility at the facility (Study Case OB-91(A), 2015). To achieve this, Marshall and Warfield engage with employees to create change in their perspective of EHR use. For example, the two begin meeting with Medicare Team over lunch in one-on-one sessions to help map out step-by-step billing and collection requirements.
In every organization, the team that works at the facility is its stronghold. The other strength at HH is the willingness of the team to improve working performance with the help of its management. However, the main weakness of the facility is the limited number of staff, especially the Medicare Team. The major threat faced by the organization is the inability by the employees to move forward with the implementation of the HER hence preventing real change from happening. Due to interdepartmental differences, the internal conflicts between departmental members also threaten to realize the intended outcomes. HH’s greatest opportunity with EHR implementation is the potential to achieve full performance by bringing in cash and managing service delivery speeds. Based on the SWOT analysis, the environmental factor(s) at play that might impact the delivery of care is the facility’s infrastructure level. In this situation, infrastructure translates to software adoption and healthcare IT solutions at the facility. Unless HH employees effectively handle the adoption of this necessary equipment in implementing the process, improvement in service delivery will never be realized.
Reference
Study Case OB-91(A). (2015). Huntington Hospital (A): Empowering Staff.