Introduction
In any consultancy procedure, it is important to identify areas that top the list of agendas. Considering that health care is most critical, it is important to identify major issues that stalls its provision. It is also important to note that Religious health care system has been performing as a non-profit health care system for a long time. This means that new changes will or may alter this kind of medical care provision in the future. The following are some of the areas of improvement that the governing board of the consultant company wanted to be addressed.
Areas of improvement
Management
According to the board, the management of health care is very much critical as any other area. The governing body agrees that the health care system requires a change in the management. This means that a new management system that is competent and motivated is essential. It is important to remember that managerial decisions such as planning, budgeting, decision making, coordinating and such are taken up by the management. In this respect, an improvement in the management system is inevitable.
Information systems
The manner in which information is collected as data, processed, used and stored is of greater importance. In this accord, the governing board seeks to ensure that there is a complete overhaul of the information system that will oversee an entry of technology-based data collection techniques being used in the health care systems. This will be integral, especially in ensuring that internal audit operations are conducted effectively.
Outpatient services
Considering that majority of the patient who visits the Religious health center are outpatients. An outpatient program that ensures such patients benefit optimally from such services is needed. In this aspect, various health care divisions in charge of physicians, recording, nursing and other general health care providers will be harnessed to ensure that outpatient services are served effectively and in a timely manner. Moreover, the outpatient program will have an extra patient follow-up program to ensure that such patients benefit from the Religious health care.
Bed capacity
From the records, it is evident that Religious health center do not have enough beds or bed capacity to serve the high admission conducted by the health center. It is inevitable to have a high number of hospital beds and not increase the bed capacity. Having high number of admissions and a low bed capacity, risks poor health conditions given to the admitted patients.
Financing
Financing of the current Religious health facility is crucial. Considering that the health centers are no-profit making organizations, it is clear that its funding comes from donors, self income- generating programs and well-wishers. Such kind of health centers attracts a lot of patients, who cannot afford high, quality and specialized health care provided in high-end private health centers. It is therefore, critical that new strategies that generate finance be considered by the governing bodies. Such kind of finance is deemed to improve the state of the health centers. For example, such finance can be used to source additional beds, improve equipments and other expenses or hire competent personnel.
Personnel
The Religious health center has resourceful personnel that can be used in an effective manner. It is common for non-profit organization not to hire fully competent personnel, since they want to cut on expenses. Nonetheless, instead of cutting down on personnel, the health center should put optimal use of the available human resource. However, such should be done by leveraging on qualifications and competency.
Key performance dimensions
The following can be used by Religious health center as key performance dimensions and some of their specific measures. Such can be used in improvement of the overall organization performance.
Financial
The performance of the organization’s finances should reflect how finance affects the growth of the organization. Well management of the organization will indicate that the organization has enough funds for expanding their bed capacity. Moreover, good financial management will indicate that the organization has cut down on unnecessary expenditures. An expenditure of $125 millions is relatively high considering that the health facility does not have major avenues of generating revenue. In this respect, a better way to measure financial performance is to use metrics such as the cash flow statements, budgetary estimates and net income statements.
Patient satisfaction
This performance measure can be likened to customer satisfaction. This measure is deemed to evaluate as to whether patients are satisfied with the Religious health center services. The recorded 221,000 outpatient visits is an indication that majority of the patients feel satisfied with services offered at the health facility. In this respect, another metric for such performance can be evidenced by the total number of admission recorded. In this case, the hospital recorded 133,000 admissions that can be likened to customer retention.
Organization’s growth
This performance measure is essential in evaluating whether Religious health facility has been able to foster change. This change should be tangible in form of innovation, increased capacity, and use of information. From the data provided, the census recorded indicates that the organization is yet to expand its technologies from information usage. It is also evident that the heath care facility does not have enough bed capacity. Therefore, metrics to be used in this instance include the bed capacity and census records.
Evaluating nursing performance
In order to evaluate the performance of nurses in an emergency room scenario, the following measures can be used (Buppert, 2008).
Patient history taking
This performance measure is an essential part of nursing, especially in emergency units. A nurse is supposed to understand the history of the patient ailment and be able to know the kind of medical attention such a patient requires instantly. This requires a quick and focused primary and secondary survey of the same. This should be followed by a correct recommendation of the same.
Appropriate documentation
This is appropriate for a nurse, since the same documents are to be used by the patients and other medical care givers. It therefore, requires for the nurse to do a proper documentation that is articulate, direct, correct and clear. Therefore, proper medical language should be used in such documentation.
Communication and collaboration
Communication skills are essential in an emergency room. A nurse should have good communication skills to engage the patient and other medical care givers for prompt action. Considering that an emergency room requires hastened actions, it is of importance to have a communication that is well responded to by all stakeholders. In addition, this requires the nurse be a good team player to ensure that all expected activities are coordinated amongst the medical care givers and the patient attended to in the emergency room.
Steps in managing specific patients groups
Defining target group: The first step is identifying the target group that requires special attention. For example, a certain group of individuals have certain health conditions that require a special team of doctors or medical caregivers, special medication and treatment.
Assessing health status and needs: The second step is to asses what the patient’s needs are. These needs are prompted by the patient’s heath status at the moment. Therefore, this assessment should consider the various specific medical interventions to administer to the group of patients. It is important to understand that the treatment of an individual patient in such kind of a group affects the health of the entire group. Therefore, intervention, medication and prevention measures are usually administered individually or as a group.
Establish a patient group direction: The third step is creating a patient group direction program (PGD). The program will cater for the general medication of the group through a team of medical care givers. This will ensure there is a controlled supply of such medication as required by law and medical policies (Getliffe & Dolman, 2007).
Monitoring and evaluating procedures: This final step is mandated to following up the special patient group. This will entail evaluating the medication and recovering process. The evaluation expects the outcome of the program to be positive or rectification of some practices done in the PGD program.
Public image and increasing market share
Religious health system can improve its public image through the following.
Public reporting: This is a good strategy in engaging the public in knowing what the health care facility does. For example, a hospital can report on quality or new service offered in the hospital. This increases public awareness about the existence of the health facility or hospital. At the same time, the health center increases its market share by reaching out to the public. In addition, public reporting makes the health center improve in areas they are ought to create public confidence and market competitiveness.
Local employment: Sourcing human resource from the immediate environment offers the health care facility a chance to increase its publicity. In addition, local environment offers a chance to provide affordable and cheap labor for various human resource needs in the facility.
Websites and online advertisements: Creation of websites is one of the newest methods of creating awareness in a technology savvy public. In addition, this offers an opportunity to recruit new clients to the hospital. However, this will depend on the content of the websites. Well documented content on the hospital centers, products and services, and costing is a sure way of increasing publicity and marketing.
Technology-based data-collection strategies
In recent times, there have been two strategies that collect data online. These strategies are technology-based techniques (Richey & Klein, 2007).
E-mail surveys: This strategy is used by some hospital to conduct research or follow-ups on patients. Basically, the patients or research respondents are sent message contents or instructions through an email. This message is less costly and in most cases can be administered to a large population.
Web-based surveys: This is a form of collecting data from medical surveys. In most cases, the surveys are also sent as an email that has an attached survey. The respondents fill in the survey form and send it back. This is a nice form of data collection technique, since such can immediately be converted to data-base by the health facility. This methodology is simple, less costly, and flexible and can be used on a large population. In addition, time used to gather information and converted to usable data and stored in data base is relatively minimal.
References
Buppert, C. (2008). Nurse practitioner’s business practice and legal guide. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Getliffe, K. & Dolman, M. (2007). Promoting continence: A clinical and Research resource. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Health Sciences.
Richey, C., R. & Klein, D., J. (2007). Design and development research: Methods, strategies and issues. New York, NY: Routledge.