HCAHPS
Earlier, it was difficult to measure the quality of service in most health centers, including Randall. However, the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) analysis has facilitated this process in these health centers. This approach is also known as the model that describes gaps between expectations and performing. The HCAHPS aims to describe the gap and consequently leads to the better understanding of what type of service is provided by the hospital from the consumer perspective (Bakan, Buyukbese, & Ersahan, 2013).
The Purpose, Quality Measures, and Tools of HCAHPS
The quality of service used to be determined by the following ten aspects, namely “reliability, tangibility, communication, security, credibility, competence, understanding, access, understanding and knowing customers, responsiveness” (Mosadeghrad, 2014). However, nowadays, the quality of service is evaluated in accordance with five fundamental tools, namely “reliability, tangible, responsiveness, assurance and empathy” (Fielding & Briss, 2013) in most hospitals. First of all, the quality of service is measured by empathy.
It is significantly important for the clients to get individual attention. Tangible deals with the hospital itself and what it can offer to the customers. Assurance describes the level of competence of the staff and the possibility to create the relationships with the clients based on trust and respect (Raheem, Nawaz, Fouzia, & Imamuddin, 2014). For the patients to be satisfied, the service should be reliable. The clients usually want to be aware of the process of treatment, and it should occur according to the schedule since timing is a significant aspect that influences the quality of the health care. Responsiveness is about the willingness to provide the appropriate help and ease the life of the patients in the hospital.
General Description of the Data
In order to make the HCAHPS effective, the health centers, including the Kendall Regional Medical Center, have made it their responsibility to gather and analyze data on patient response, health records, time taken to recover, and the number of repeat visits or referrals. In these hospitals, the average score of success is often 78% against the national average of 70% (Yildiz & Demirors, 2014). This means that the Kendall Regional Medical Center and other hospitals have been effective in the use of the HCAHPS. However, the challenges identified from the research at the Kendall Regional Medical Center are the imbalance in expert approach to service delivery, dysfunctional networks and partnerships deals, and ineffective quality performance trackers.
The Comparison Between the Benchmarks and the State Data
Apparently, the benchmarking initiative for expertise service delivery involves streamlining service charter to ensure efficiency via a proactive quality mitigation channel, which reports progress of the intended quality improvement system (Soumendu, 2011). The center will aspire to achieve efficiency in the chain of command between output and customer satisfaction. Since the scope of quality is universal across different sizes of businesses, implementation of total quality management at the Kendall Regional Medical Center cannot change, rather, it will only be modified to fit within different services that are demanded by the clients. The moral obligation will be in the forefront while the stakeholders at the bottom of the triangle (Yildiz & Demirors, 2014). The value structure will be supported by a decentralized decision support system.
Recommendations
Expertise and Professional Approach to Service Provision
The hospital should ensure that the services at the hospital are offered in the most professional and satisfying way to all the stakeholders such as suppliers, logistics support, patients, and the local community. Implementation of the expertise service strategy is a systematic measure that is instituted by an organization in order to maintain efficient and effective operation matrix (Raheem et al., 2014). Therefore, it is important to have effective service delivery standards for controls within the Kendall Regional Medical Center to ensure efficiency.
Proper Partnerships and Sustainable Networks
The hospital should strive to develop critical networking partnerships with the local healthcare organizations, government agencies, and hospitals to ensure that best practices are borrowed or exchanged in a structured manner. These alliances will make the referrals and consultations easy to act on since the health facility will be functioning as a healthcare partner to other providers. Basically, a networking system is a complex association comprising of suppliers, healthcare providers, and other players that function within the healthcare industry (Fielding & Briss, 2013). The Kendall Regional Medical Center will implement the networking system as basically aimed at making an improvement to the general state of relationships between its service provision charter and that of the local healthcare agencies.
The proposed patient centricity approach will encompass proactive communication channel building to ensure that the process of encoding and decoding information when interacting with each patient promote confidentiality and friendly interaction. Basically, this objective will operate on the pillar of equality in handling the concerns of all patients such as first-come-first-serve policy, follow-up on previous treatment, and provision of accurate information to all patients (Soumendu, 2011). The hospital will oversee the long-term services focused on improving the scheme for managing patient records and other health information systems. Before administering every form of treatment, the consent of the patient and openness will be activated through proper and professional interaction.
Effectiveness of the Hospital Organization
The current organization climate is aligned to quality performance through corporate governance, quality improvement channels, internal controls, and proactive leadership structures to micromanage performance and growth of each department. In the case of the Kendall Regional Medical Center, the performance tracking system will be implemented to guarantee organization effectiveness. Reflectively, the system offers the opportunity for the Kendall Regional Medical Center to fill the vacuum that often exists between company actions and strategies adopted (Soumendu, 2011).
At the same time, the system engages a multifaceted user board in planning for the immediate, midterm, and long-term strategies. Also, the system has application for tracking feedback against the progress of each strategy and records any changes in the dynamic healthcare environment (Yildiz & Demirors, 2014). Thus, the performance tracking system is a necessary tool for system evaluation of the strategies in place at the Kendall Regional Medical Center against future focus in order to successfully translate the strategies into deliverable variables that can be quantified.
Performance Management System
Performance management system is a process of fostering developing within the organizational set ups through the adoption of a cycle of well-planned intervention approaches aimed at enhancing the general efficiency of an organization, and at the same time bettering the positions of a majority of its members (Bakan et al., 2013). Specifically, a good working environment should be flexible, relevant, and comfortable within set measurement standards that support an intrinsic and extrinsic relationship between an organization and different performance systems.
There are laid down structures at the Kendall Regional Medical Center formulated to keep staff in healthy and stable mind in their duty of serving the interests of an organization through ethical communication models. Organizational behavior at the Kendall Regional Medical Center is aligned with four models. These models are the motivation to acquire, bond, comprehend, and defend (Soumendu, 2011). The hospital will put out most of the documents such as policies, procedure manuals, and new rules through the intranet web pages. This will save Kendall Regional Medical Center costs relating to printing, maintaining and circulating such documents. Also, an intranet makes it easier for communication across the organization.
References
Bakan, I., Buyukbese, T., & Ersahan, B. (2013). The impact of total quality service (TQS) on healthcare and patient satisfaction: An empirical study of Turkish private and public hospitals. The International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 29(3), 292-315.
Fielding, J., & Briss, P. (2013). Promoting evidence-based public health policy: Can we have better evidence and more action? Health Affairs, 25(4), 969-978.
Mosadeghrad, A. (2014). Factors influencing healthcare service quality. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 3(2), 77-89.
Raheem, A. R., Nawaz, A., Fouzia, N., & Imamuddin, K. (2014). Patients’ satisfaction and quality health services: An investigation from private hospitals of Karachi, Pakistan. Patients’ Satisfaction and Quality Health Services: An Investigation from Private Hospitals of Karachi, Pakistan, 3(7), 34-38.
Soumendu, B. (2011). Commitment, involvement, and satisfaction as predictors of employee performance. South Asian Journal of Management, 18(2), 92-107.
Yildiz, O., & Demirors, O. (2014). Healthcare quality indicators-a systematic review. International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, 27(3), 209-222.