Huron County Health Department’s Strategic Planning

Topics: Health, Strategic Planning Words: 1384 Pages: 6

Organization Profile

Huron County Health Department (HCHD) is a non-profit small organization located in Huron with a mission to promote and protect people’s health by providing a variety of quality health, environmental and human services to the residents of Huron County. The organization seeks to collaborate with the Board of Health (BOH) and the community of Huron to provide a new approach to health protection and promotion. The number of employees in the nonprofit organization is 20 and the organization runs a budget of $2,712,025 (Huron County Health Department, 2012). The organization offers a vast variety of health services such as environmental health services, preventive maternal child health services, and adult reproductive health education services among others. The current mission of the information system strategy in the organization is to avail of broad and high-quality services to those in need. Recently the organization developed an electronic health record platform. Board of health and a managing director leads the HCHD organization. The HCHD organization prides itself in providing excellent health care services.

Need for Strategic Change

The major challenge facing the HCHD organization is implementing the new quality improvement in service delivery ideas without a structure or flow. Presently, the HCHD organization implements new efficiency in service delivery control processes without communication with all employees and clients. The HCHD organization struggles vehemently to implement corporate strategies (efficient and cost-effective resource management) as a response to existing competitive markets. To gain high benefits in its service delivery module, the HCHD organization should use a quality improvement strategy to improve overall patient health outcomes since satisfied clients translate into business sustainability. For the HCHD quality improvement strategy to be a success and create and sustain competitive advantage, it has to gain the ability to gather, store, and distribute service delivery improvements (Amal, Regina, Steven, & Donna, 2011).

SWOT analysis

Strengths

The HCHD organization has already established itself in the Huron County region. It is already into the subsidized health segment and has previous experience in the quality health care services.
The organization has good terms with the local support organizations and private donors and can deliver services at no charge to those who need these services most.
The organization has concentrated in the small family segment in offering health services that have been ignored by the big health care players.

Weaknesses

The organization has not operated in the United States for long enough hence may not have exact projections on the funds and their use.
The organization depends on twenty people as the workforce hence may not maximize its activities in the market.
The organization has the disadvantage of unreliability in health service delivery since the small workforce has to do all the work. They cannot keep up with the demand despite working for long hours.

Threats

Too many non-profit health organizations are in the market of Huron County, especially the big players with more credibility in offering free health services.
The success of the organization will depend on the reception of their appeal for donor funding in the market of Huron County. If the projections don’t add up, then the organization may take longer to raise funds or may end up collapsing.

Opportunities

The organization has an opportunity for unlimited expansion in the market of Huron County with more than 100,000 families in need of its services.
The organization has the opportunity of attracting more donors through referrals since its local network is well established.
The organization has the opportunity of diversifying health care services beyond treatment to counseling and social health support.

SWOT Results and Influence on the Strategic Planning Process

Quality improvement will be used to measure, assess, and improve client service delivery outcomes. From the SWOT analysis, there is a need for quality improvement at the HCHD organization. Quality improvement ensures that consumers get quality services and products. Thus, knowing how to improve quality is crucial in the growth of the organization. Consumers normally go for products that performed best. Besides, quality improvement will serve the organization’s needs to improve performance, durability, maintain economic viability, maintain visual and aesthetic appeal, maintain superiority in service delivery, and keep a good reputation due to quality assurance. Thus, this quality improvement deployment and organization change action plan will show how HCHD will use quality improvement to gain the trust of clients (Michael et al. 2012).

As observed in the SWOT analysis, there is a lack of proper performance management system as one of the weaknesses. Thus, the need for a proper performance management system within the HCHD’s service delivery to clients is instrumental. Based on the belief emphasis, it stresses ethical behavior and customer satisfaction within accepted standards of moral obligation on the forefront, while the stakeholders at bottom of the triangle of client response against the perception of service delivery quality. Thus, the proposed quality improvement deployment and organization change action plan present an action plan that would facilitate the organization’s gain in long term operations is value and quality improvement (Bryson, 2011).

Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Cycle Analysis

The four phases of change management process according to the appreciative inquiry4-D cycle analysis are discover, dream, design, and destiny. With relation to the HCHD, the analysis is summarized in the diagram below.

Discover: The organization has a stable employee engagement strategy which involves continuous training on patient care and proactive performance.

Dream: The current team charter at the organization recognizes talent and outstanding performance among the employees through rewards and promotion. The reward and promotion are enshrined in the current organizational quality principle charter.

Design: The team priorities are designed and implemented continuously for six months of operations. The key strategies in the team priority alignment include patient care module, counseling support, and proactive logistics execution to ensure organizational sustainability.

Delivery: There are set down deliverables that are measured against the expected performance level for all personnel. This is measured within the 360-degree feedback channel as a prerequisite for optimal performance. The achievements of the organization and employees are benchmarked within the general performance charter against previously recorded output.

Inquiry 4-D Cycle Analysis Results and Influence on the Strategic Planning Process

The success puzzle for quality improvement and organizational change implementation management strategy delivery operates on the periphery of the soft skills involving the timeless vision of organizational principles. Besides, defining the value of the business, determining requirements, clarifying the vision, building teams, mitigating tasks, resolving issues, and providing direction complete the response projections which shall be addressed in the proposed quality service delivery system (Escrig-Tena et al. 2011). Quality planning is an important policy that aims to promote long term success in business objectives. Furthermore, quality planning is focused on benchmarking of efficiency of the operations and service delivery initiative, accreditation initiative, and staff performance and skills assessment initiative. As indicated in the results of the appreciative inquiry4-D cycle analysis, the strategic planning process may integrate the 360-degree feedback against performance benchmarks to ensure that organizational performance and employee performance are congruent to the goals of the HCHD organization (Montgomery, 2009).

Comparative Analysis: Using SWOT and Appreciative Inquiry4-D Cycle Analysis

Organization outcome (using SWOT)	Organization outcome ( using Appreciative Inquiry4-D Cycle Analysis)
Effective staff performance evaluation and efficiency assessment initiative will ensure that progressive change in the organization has minimal opposition from different quarters that offer support services.	Bench-Marking initiative involves streamlining service delivery to ensure efficiency via a proactive quality mitigation channel will be easy to track for the progress of the intended quality improvement system.
The SWOT initiative should create an ideal atmosphere for human resource performance and training through programs that promote the proactive engagement of factors of production in the service delivery matrix.	Managers in the organization will be obligated to ensure change will be able to come up with benefits-cost strategies, especially through reviewing the relevance and contributions of the factors of production such as human resources.

Conclusion

Since quality improvement and control refer to business activities that are focused to fulfill the satisfying expectation of consumers, benchmarking initiative will facilitate the achievement of a complete interaction module between clients and employees of the organization through the use of personnel management, which adopts specialized insight in business experience and professionalism. Such strategies are adopted as a result of the need to instill positive impacts on the current organizational service delivery.

References

Amal, T.N., Regina, G.C., Steven, M.W., and Donna, W.L. (2011). The importance of transitional care in achieving health reform. Health Affairs, 30(4), 707.

Bryson, J. (2011). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement (4^th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Escrig-Tena, A., Bou-Llusar, C., Beltran, M., and Roca-Puig, V. (2011). Modelling the Implications of Quality Management Elements on Strategic Flexibility. Advances in Decision Sciences, 1(1), pp. 1-27.

Michael, P., Mark, S., Joe, S., Michael, S., Lane, M., and Carri, H. (2012). Harnessing the Power of Enhanced Data for Healthcare Quality Improvement: Lessons from a Minnesota Hospital Association Pilot Project. Journal of Healthcare Management, 57(6), p. 406.

Montgomery, D. (2009). Introduction to Statistical Quality Control. New York: John Wiley & Sons.