Strategic Performance Evaluation Of Middleville Regional Healthcare

Issues identified

Middleville Regional Health Care is one of the three hospitals that serve a large community of 350,000 people and its governing body has hired a consulting company which will evaluate its strategic performance. This study will actively play the role of a consultant’s evaluation and several leaders of the Middleville’s unit will be asked to provide their perspective on the performance of the organization. This study will emphasize on identification of the issues after conducting a proper discussion with a consultant team and with the CEO and the governing body.

Interviews and internal surveys were conducted and it provided an insight into the practice of the manager and the several issues that are affecting the performance of the Middleville Regional Health Care. The issues are highlighted as under:

• The exact role of the governing body must be identified so that the governing can be involved into determining the involvement and the responsibility of the governing body.
• The performance is not up to the standards and Middleville Regional Health Care is unable to provide the quality healthcare to the designated community. There is also the need to measure the indicators.
• The performance of Middleville Regional Health Care is hit and it faces stiff competition from the other market competitors. Thus, there is a need to revamp it healthcare structure so that is can maintain a market dominance.
• The Middleville Regional Health Care lacks advanced technology system within it healthcare system and thus there is a need for enormous amount of technology so that it can serve the community effectively.
• Middleville Regional Health Care also faces issues relating to retaining and recruitment of the nurses and thus there is a need to increase the satisfaction of the employees.

The governance of any healthcare institute is the central body that has the capability of organizational success. Middleville Regional Health Care also has a governing body that works towards the excellency of the organization. The governing body strives continuously for the betterment of the care delivery to the people of the communities. However, considering the recent developments and market competition Middleville Regional Health Care needs to consider important responsibilities of governance body. The vital responsibilities of the Middleville Regional Health Care governing body include board development, board monitoring, orientation and recruitment. The responsibility of the board of the Trustees is to review and develop overall strategy and mission of Middleville Regional Health Care. The responsibility of the secretary of Middleville Regional Health Care is to recruit, elect and appoint the new members. The responsibility of the general counsel is to oversee the team of attorneys. Responsibility of the treasurer is similar to the role of a financial advisor. The responsibility of the dean of medicine is to manage the everyday activities of the hospital. The responsibility of the president is to effectively manage the relationship between the decision makers and the owners. The roles of the upper management are to set budgets and goals for the departments. The role of the hospital board is to oversee that best quality healthcare is provided to the patients and also satisfy the shareholders.

The three performances that Middleville Regional Health Care can use to measure its success in the community that are identifiable and measureable are as follows:

• Information systems can be implemented so that the performances related data can be collected and organized from the existing information and it can be disseminated. Focus can be placed on the resource allocation and cost containment.
• Public reporting is an important aspect for the new health care organization as it includes the informing the stakeholders and the general public (community). The reports are published as information that can measure the performance of Middleville Regional Health Care (Euro.who.int 2018).
• Professional improvement is the most common performance measurement indicator. The assessment of the professional improvement will provide scrutiny and external assessment existing in the health system. The performance improvement provides feedback for the clinicians that can be judged in comparison to their peers (Euro.who.int. 2018); (Redknap et al.2015).

The performance of the Middleville Regional Health Care has been analysed in comparison to its competitors and thus there is a need to maintain a competitive market share in order to provide a better and effective care for the community.

Middleville	575	13,000	350	221,000	2,300	$125,000	2,000
Brierfield	380	17,000	260	175,000	1,200	$130,000	1,875
Greystone	350	10,000	180	40,000	900	$80,000	1,200

The main areas of focus are as follows:

• It can be clearly seen that the number of beds is high in Middleville in comparison to the other healthcare organizations (HCOs). While the number of admissions is less in comparison to the other HCOs. Thus, there is a need to provide better healthcare amenities for the patients.
• The number of outpatient visits is significantly high in comparison to the other HCOs. Thus, Middleville must recruit more health workers and physicians that can provide care to the outpatients.
• Considering the number of births in the Middleville, the governing body must increase the number of the neonatal care units.

The interviews and the survey conducted have revealed that the board of members are willing to incorporate a technology system over the period of 5 years. The implementation of the technology will pertain to the adoption of electronic medical records that can be effectively integrated with the health data system (Bratt 2013).

                     

                                                Figure 1: Implementation of the EMR system (done by author)

The EMR system implementation plan will incorporate an implementation plan that will initially include a planning stage. The planning stage will have the planning process pertaining to the equipping the EMR technology into the hospital system. The staffs will be incorporated within the EMR system and they will collect patient data. The data collected are then fed into the EMR system and the data are fed into the EMR system. The data will then be made accessible to the patients as well to the physicians (Mutale et al. 2013).

Middleville is also facing issues pertaining to the retaining and the recruiting the clinical employees. It has also been found that as because the economy is badly hit, the Middleville is experiencing serious shortage of funds. This has negatively impacted the salary structure of the nurses and the added work pressure has also the retention of the nurses (Brown et al. 2013). Thus, to solve this issues and quarterly rewards and recognition can be organized for the nurses that are working sincerely for people of the community. The issues and the grievances of the nurses must be rectified immediately so that they can work properly under pressure (Van den Heede et al. 2013). This way the employee retention can be improved (Twigg and McCullough 2014); (Mbemba et al. 2013).

Conclusion

From the above discussion it can be concluded that the healthcare organizations are an important part for the people in a community that depend entirely on the health care institutes. It has been seen that the healthcare organization often fall behind the other organizations in terms of providing proper healthcare. Thus, external agencies are often assigned the duty of identifying the issues and suggesting solutions for the same. The nurses are often seen to be having issues with long hours of work and persistent pressure of attending the patients. Thus, healthcare organizations must incorporate proper employee retention policies so the nurses can do their job uninterrupted.  

Reference

Bratt, M.M., 2013. Nurse residency program: Best practices for optimizing organizational success. Journal for Nurses in Professional Development, 29(3), pp.102-110.

Brown, P., Fraser, K., Wong, C.A., Muise, M. and Cummings, G., 2013. Factors influencing intentions to stay and retention of nurse managers: a systematic review. Journal of Nursing Management, 21(3), pp.459-472.

Euro.who.int. 2018. Performance Measurement for Health System Improvement: Experiences, Challenges and Prospects (2009). Retrieved from https://www.euro.who.int/en/about-us/partners/observatory/publications/studies/performance-measurement-for-health-system-improvement-experiences,-challenges-and-prospects-2009

Mbemba, G., Gagnon, M.P., Paré, G. and Côté, J., 2013. Interventions for supporting nurse retention in rural and remote areas: an umbrella review. Human Resources for Health, 11(1), p.44.

Mutale, W., Chintu, N., Amoroso, C., Awoonor-Williams, K., Phillips, J., Baynes, C., … & Sherr, K. 2013. Improving health information systems for decision making across five sub-Saharan African countries: implementation strategies from the African Health Initiative. BMC health services research, 13(2), S9.

Redknap, R., Twigg, D., Rock, D. and Towell, A., 2015. N ursing practice environment: A strategy for mental health nurse retention?. International journal of mental health nursing, 24(3), pp.262-271.

Twigg, D., & McCullough, K. 2014. Nurse retention: A review of strategies to create and enhance positive practice environments in clinical settings. International journal of nursing studies, 51(1), 85-92.

Van den Heede, K., Florquin, M., Bruyneel, L., Aiken, L., Diya, L., Lesaffre, E. and Sermeus, W., 2013. Effective strategies for nurse retention in acute hospitals: a mixed method study. International journal of nursing studies, 50(2), pp.185-194.