Businesses are affected by internal and external forces to attain and maintain competitiveness business leaders have to make strategic decisions that address prevailing challenges. In the medical care industry, there are different regulatory bodies that govern how the industry should be managed. In the case of Primary Care Clinic, the management has to consider different parameters when making strategic decisions to improve its service delivery. Although the prime role of medical facilities is to offer quality medical care services, when operating as private business, they have a profit motive (Huber, 2006). This paper discusses the structure and operational environment of Primary Care Clinic.
Political, economic, and social forces that may have influenced the development of the clinic
When operating a medical facility, the United States government has enacted and empowered regulatory agencies to regulate the industry. Primary Care Clinic has to abide with the regulations and ensure it always act within the law. Some of the legislations that the facility has to deal with include Food & Drug Administration (FDA), The Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ), and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The above bodies have their set rules that are legally abiding; the clinic has no other option then follow them. When in operation, the clinic will be monitored and vetted for quality by The Joint Commission (TJC), the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), and the Accreditation Commission for Healthcare (ACHC). To be allowed to operate in the United States, the Clinic has no option other then abide to the requirements of the legislations governing the industry. In such a case, there are some contradictions when the law prevails. The political class in the United States affects the medical industry through some of the recent policies they enact and observe include medicare cards systems.
Primary Care Clinic has its target market as the people of the location it is situated in when doing business. It does so by offering services to the certain people, thus it is affected by the social environment it is operating in. The perception and the attitude that the people have developed towards the clinic will influence whether they will be willing to conduct business with it or not. In such a case, there have been shortcomings with the service delivered to people from the facility. Social forces operating in the environment are likely to affect business of the facility; social forces include religious and cultural believes, and general attitude of the community towards clinics. In such a case, the community has people who do not believe in undertaking modern medical services as offered by the clinic, then there is a high likelihood that they will not attend the facility (Huber, 2006).
Primary Care Clinic mission statement
“The clinic aims at offering quality, affordable, reliable medical care services via experiences human capital, and use of modern technology”. The above mission statement is used to affirm the role that the facility intends to play in the community to the people. It aims at creating the notion that the facility is superior to any other in the region, and thus patients should have the confidence to consider its services. The mission touches on the cost of the medication, it states that the clinic will use its available resources optimally to offer affordable and reliable medication, this is a parameter that patients look into when deciding their choice facility.
Performance measures at Primary Care Clinic
To gauge the effectiveness of Primary Care Clinic, the management can use the following measurement approaches:
Consumer survey
Under this method, the management will gauge the response that the community offers about the facility. The response may come from the rate at which treated patients understand their condition and their chances of attending the same or another facility with the same condition. The reason for choosing this method is because it gauges the quality that has already been offered.
Statistical indicator
These are parameters that can be set by the facility to gauge the rate at which it is offering quality service and as well as the rate at which it is able to use resources optimally. Some of the indicators may include human resources development and motivation, cost management, and continuous adoption of technology. The rationale for choosing this method is because it looks into matter that yields to quality of medical care service.
Third party assessment
Under this method the facility is audited for its quality provision level, and report given is used to gauge whether the facility improves on quality or not. The method is chosen as it incorporates the use of other people other than those working in the clinic.
How to approach decisions regarding clinic expansion and annual plan approval
When making a decision on expanding the clinic, the management must play a crucial role indentifying the needs, chances, risks, and opportunities that it has for the expansion. Decisions within a business enterprise should be made using scientific method of decision making as it looks into the situation at hand, gathers relevant information and give different alternatives for the management to consider.
Depending on the decisions and expansion method adopted by the company, the management has the option of having annul plan approvals. The method comes into play when dealing with a rolling budget case where the completion of one set of expansion plan opens another.
The role of the clinic as a component of the healthcare delivery system in your community
Primary Care Clinic plays a role of providing quality, affordable, and reliable medical care services to the extent that its human, physical, and financial resources can allow. As a clinic, it offers first aid cases, and according to a certain condition, what they can handle. Then they refer the patient to the appropriate office for the same thing. The setting of the clinic will offer services via young doctors and nurse practitioners in an austere and budget conscious setting. The closeness to the people by the clinic means that it can easily be accessed and offer services that requires emergency attention. When referring a patient, it will have examined him or her and offer a background information to the referral hospital using the best way that the situation can be handled; this will boosts the quality of medical care services which are offered.
Within the operating community, the facility will serve the lower economic community and be an avenue to specialized medical care services. They link high profile medical services with low cadre ones; when doing this role, they are actually assisting the people to access quality medical care provision (Heim, 2010).
How public healthcare policy influenced the formation of outpatient clinics in the healthcare system
Public health policies are aimed at ensuring that medical services are availed to the people regardless of their social status in the community. Using the policy, people can get quality and affordable medical care. The United States medical department has enacted “Health Care Reform” and “Health Insurance Reform” as a part of the reforms to boost the access to public health care policy. With such policies, they have had negative and positive effects on the development of outpatient clinics.
Negative effect
Clinics offer quality services that may sometimes be cheaper than the ones offered by conventional medical care facilities. With the invention and growth of public health care system, conventional medical care facilities can offer the services at competitive rates limiting the demand for clinic services. This reduces the growth of the clinics; public health care system targets to boost their accessibility and their presence within the community. This was the role that clinics and dispensaries was playing in the past.
When there is an increase, the effects can be felt in two ways. The first one is the quality of the services that are likely to go down, and the second one is the duration that will be increased because someone has to wait before getting the medication. With the two working hand in hand, patients with a higher economical standing in the community are likely to consider other channels of getting the service; this creates an opportunity for clinics which are of high quality and have well-developed equipments.
Positive effects
The increase in public healthcare policy advocacy is likely to affect the medical care field positively; it is going to limit the demand for clinics that offered cheap medical care services that might be questionable in quality. On the other hand, the policy is likely to create opportunity for well equipped clinics and dispensaries to cater for well to do people in the community (Cleverly & Cameron, 2007).
World Health Organization requires medical facilities to offer reliable and affordable medical services to attain the above requirement. Primary Care Clinic needs to continually advance their quality management approach. When making decisions, the management should consider the ultimate results in terms of quality improvement and financial benefits to the clinic.
References
Cleverly, W. O., & Cameron, A. E. (2007). Essentials of health care finance. Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett.
Heim, L. (2010). Identifying and Addressing Potential Conflict of Interest: A Professional Medical Organization’s Code of Ethics. Annals of Family Medicine, 8(4), 359-361.
Huber, D. (2006). Leadership and nursing care management. Pennsylvania: Saunders Elsevier.