Introduction
Trinity Community Hospital is located in the southeast of the United States. It was established twenty-seven years ago on a 25-acre campus. The hospital is easily accessible from all major roadways. It is a 150-bed facility offering medical services such as internal medicine, gastroenterology, urology, pulmonary medicine, general surgery, gynecology, and neurology. In addition, all basic medical support services are available. These include laboratory, radiology, pharmacy, respiratory therapy, and physical therapy. The reputation of the hospital is generally good and renowned for its excellence in offering its services. Particularly, the nurses are competent and committed to providing excellent services to the patients. Trinity Community Hospital’s mission is to provide quality healthcare to patients. Healthcare is committed to offering its services in a manner that every patient receives the appropriate care and support that is required. Trinity community healthcare aims at providing high-quality services while ensuring that its patients, visitors and staff are safe. The institution aims to expand its services in order to operate effectively and generate sufficient capital to cater for its services (Knight, 2010b).
The hospital wards/rooms are furnished with recliners and sofa sleepers, a bathroom, and custom cabinets that store medical records and equipment. The large windows make the rooms well lit and aerated. The ample sunlight on the natural woods and the warm colors creates not only an expensive landscape but also a soothing environment that eases the patient’s recovery. The healthcare offers patients nourished delicacy cuisine prepared and directed by Russian dietitian and Chef Katarina Novikov. Guests eat from the Bistro Café. They are also allowed to deliver meals to family members in the hospital room. The hospital’s objectives are to offer exceptional care and services by employing outstanding employees and medical staff members in order to make them distinguished from other hospitals. Its medical staff members are acquainted with various specialties with all physicians being board certified. The physician in this facility includes family medicine physicians, internal medicine physicians, pathology physicians, emergency doctors, radiologists, Cardiologists, Cardiovascular specialists, GI specialists, gynecologists, and surgeons. This list totals 89 staff members (Kathiek, 2010c).
Major Risk Factors in Trinity Community Hospital
Community health assessment is important because it facilitates the planning of public healthcare programs. Through community health assessment, the major risks factors are identified. Additionally, the causes and the prevalence rate of illness in the community can be identified and thereby facilitate in establishing the appropriate actions required to address the healthcare challenges in the community hospital. The health assessment to be conducted at the Trinity Community Hospital targets cancer, orthopedic and cardiovascular medical services. The information used during the assessment is retrieved from various sources such as epidemiological surveys, state healthcare guidelines, and interviewing the staff and the community focus group (Knight, 2010a).
The demand for oncology services at the Trinity Community Hospital has increased sharply especially amongst the aging population. Cancer cases managed in this medical facility are approximately 3,200. This is challenging bearing in mind that there is no cancer specialists’ practice in the hospital. However, the community hospital has eight oncologists and two radiation oncologists who are working hand in hand to develop a cancer management program in the near future. According to statistics, 15% of the population is expected to be over 65 years by 2015. Statistics estimate that 50% of men and 33% of women are expected to develop cancer cases at one point in their lifetimes. This implies that cancer cases are expected to rise by 34%. The major risks in managing oncology services are the stressed condition existing on the facilities and resources of preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer. According to the hospital staff, the oncology services available are poorly coordinated. This creates delays in scheduling the services, which negatively affect the patient. Cancer prevention and control programs are not emphasized (Knight, 2010a).
The orthopedic services are expected to increase rapidly. Currently, the hospital manages 11,800 orthopedic injuries. By 2015, orthopedic cases are expected to increase by 46%. Inpatient joint and spine procedures are expected to increase by 30% whilst outpatient joint and spine procedures are estimated to reach 350%. The existing facilities and resources are inadequate to meet this growing demand for orthopedic services. For example, the hospital possesses two CT scanners, an MRI scanner, nuclear medicine, and ultrasound devices. The institution also possesses a mobile PET scanner available two days per week, which is highly underutilized.
As with oncology and orthopedic, there is increased demand for cardiovascular services. The demand is expected to increase by 2015. Currently, the facility caters to 54,000 cases of coronary artery disease, 10,800 diagnostic catch procedures, and 4,000 angioplasties. These cardiovascular cases are expected to increase by 21.6%, 22%, and 26% in cases of coronary artery disease, diagnostic catch procedures, and angioplasties respectively (Knight, 2010a).
Lastly, Trinity Community Hospital is located close to two primary competitors. The first competitor is the Tertiary Medical Centre. It is a 700-bed facility located ten miles away. This health facility is renowned for its excellence and comprehensive heart center. Additionally, the facility has established strong orthopedic and neurosurgery programs. The facility has excellent pediatric services and strong financial performance when compared to Trinity Community Hospital. However, oncology services at the Tertiary Medical Centre are poorly developed and are not accredited by ACOS. Likewise, it lacks educational programs that enlighten the community on disease prevention strategies. The regional hospital is the other competitor. It is located seven miles away from Trinity Community Hospital. Its market share is growing with good financial performance. It offers a variety of services including cardiovascular services and strong orthopedic services. However, just like Tertiary Medical Centre, its cancer services are disorganized and not accredited by the ACOS accreditation unit. It also lacks educational programs. Quaternary Medical Center is located 60 miles away. This hospital is well established as it hosts a comprehensive and internationally reputed cancer center. However, it is not considered a significant threat to Trinity Community Hospital (Knight, 2010b).
How Trinity Community Hospital Addresses the Challenges
Evidently, there are no formal oncology, orthopedic and cardiology programs in the Trinity Community Hospital. The facility employs medical radiation oncologists who are competent and committed. However, the physicians are inadequate, and this calls for additional recruitment of physicians. In addition, the oncology facilities and equipments are inadequate. The community needs additional linear accelerators, operating suites, chemo units and advanced imaging technique equipments. Therefore, more physicians are expected to be recruited in order to manage the patients efficiently. Additional advanced technological medical facilities and equipments are required. Additionally, the existing oncologists are putting effort into establishing a cancer management program at the Trinity Community Hospital. This program is meant to facilitate widespread screening for the top cancer sites (breast, prostrate, gastrointestinal and lung) by making it available throughout the community in order to diagnose the onset of the disease early enough and to monitor its progress. Hence, improving the outcomes and lowering the medical costs. Likewise, education programs will be emphasized and be supported in order to create awareness in the community. This can be done through educating the community on lifestyle modification such as regular exercises, living a healthy lifestyle (reduce smoking and alcohol intake), and consuming nutritional and healthier food products (Knight, 2010b).
The health assessment also indicated that recruitment of additional orthopedic physicians is a core priority of the hospital administration and state planning. Additionally, it was observed that the community premier orthopedic groups are located in areas close to the competing facilities. This makes it inconvenient for the physicians to perform more than minor orthopedic surgeries at the community hospital. However, there are several practices that aim at opening branch offices within the hospital campus. The hospital and state planning also intend to buy additional imaging equipment, surgical suites, and physical therapy facilities. Educational programs targeting treating, accident prevention, and healthy lifestyles will be included in the orthopedic practice. The educational programs will focus mainly on the elderly by encouraging them to participate actively in physical fitness activities in order to lower medical costs and improve health outcomes (Knight, 2010b).
Additionally, the inadequacy of the existing medical facility in the hospital is being addressed by the state planning and the Trinity Community Hospital administration in order to offer quality care to cardiovascular patients. The hospital will need more catch labs, surgical suites and a rehab center. Educational programs concerning cardiac risks factors, lifestyle modification, and healthy living need to be supported and emphasized. The financial performance of the Trinity Community Hospital has been deteriorating during the past years. However, there is a capital reserve amounting to $25,000,000. This reserve however will be used to fund capital expenditures for the anticipated oncology, orthopedic and cardiovascular initiatives (Knight, 2010b).
Trinity Community Hospital Strategic Plan Highlights
In the recent past, Trinity Community Hospital initiated a strategic planning process to address the challenges efficiently. The board of trustees has acknowledged a five-year strategic plan in order to reverse the declining performance trends on the Hospital. The CEO and the senior management assessed community needs in order to ensure that the hospital was a vital component of the country’s healthcare delivery system. The five-year strategic plan targets the following objectives (Anon, 2010b):
- Quality and safety
- Service excellence
- Staff achievement
- Sustaining Trinity Community Hospital growth and increased performance
The strategic plan has three goals namely:
- Develop regional cancer center noted for clinical and service excellence
- Develop regional orthopedic center noted for clinical and service excellence
- Develop regional cardiovascular center noted for clinical and service excellence
Each goal has three strategies including:
- Offer distinctive clinical programs and services
- Emphasize prevention and control of cardiovascular/orthopedic/oncology disease
- Enhance service access (Anon, 2010b)
Distinctive clinical programs in cardiovascular health issues include peripheral artery disease, heart failure, and the study of evidence-based treatment. The board of trustees aims at making Trinity Community Hospital the premier cardiovascular center in the region and making it a distinguished center where services offered are quality-driven. Additionally, the health facility aims at emphasizing prevention and control of cardiovascular disease through community education, establishing regular community screening and risk assessment in order to outreach services to the communities. These prevention and diagnostic treatment procedures will ensure first personal care, state of art cardiovascular services, and ease of communication between the patient and the doctor. Regular screening aims at quick diagnosis of patients in order to detect complications early enough to promptly find solutions for their condition. The services will be enhanced by fast-tracking complication development in order to coordinate services effectively. The board of trustees targets allocating $3,625,000 to cater for medical facilities such as diagnostic catheterizations and peripheral vascular procedures. Other capital investments for cardiovascular centre include $4, 500,000 for cath labs and $500,000 for cardiac rehab expansion (Anon, 2010b).
Trinity Community Hospital targets to develop a regional orthopedic center in the county. The Board of trustees strategizes to establish distinctive clinical programs such as joint, spine, and hand care. Additionally, the health facility will improve the existing rehab into a comprehensive one. The orthopedic care and multiple facilities at the Trinity Community Hospital will provide the finest medical care available in the county. The board of trustees aims at ensuring the physicians hired are vastly experienced with a range of specialties such as MRI scanners. Patient care remains the goal objective of this goal in ensuring that patients continue to receive attention throughout the healing and treatment process. The quality and safety of the patient will be enhanced by CMS orthopedic indicator and pre/post procedure class attendance. Capital investment allocated for the regional orthopedic center at Trinity Community Hospital will be used to construct a 5,000 square foot physical therapy rehabilitation center worth $600,000 on the campus and an additional $700,000 established on the adjacent land to the campus. Radiology expansion and Second MRI funds are worth $3,000,000 (Anon, 2010b).
Trinity Community Hospital is at the forefront of the fight against cancer. To develop a regional cancer center, the following distinctive clinical programs will be established. To start with, there will be multi-disciplinary disease-focused educational programs on the most common organs for cancer attack i.e. breast, lungs, gastrointestinal and prostrate. The educational program will entail regular community screening and risk assessment. Additionally, the center will offer comprehensive medical, surgical and radiation medical services to the patients. To achieve a positive outcome, the center will integrate evidence-based treatment by accessing leading clinical trials. The center aims at offering 9,100 radiation oncology treatments and 7,000 chemo treatments. The center will be established at the vacant space in the MOB1. The project has been allocated $8,000,000 (Anon, 2010b).
Summary of the Plan and Recommendation
The Board of trustees aimed at ensuring that all relevant CMS indicators are set above 90%. Additionally, there are new approaches meant to implement computerized MD order entry. This will save time and increase accuracy thereby improving the quality and safety of the services offered in the hospital. To ensure service excellence, the strategic plan aims at recommending a 90% inpatient likelihood and outpatient likelihood. Additionally, it aims at ensuring that patients attended at the hospital get 95% physician satisfaction. Additionally, the plan aims at reducing employee turnover rate by maintaining an 88% employee retention rate and 90% annual employee satisfaction. The hospital aims at raising revenue totaling $624,000 and a profit margin of $31,200,000 (Anon, 2010b).
Trinity Community Hospital: A summary of Five-year Hospital-wide target outcomes
Therefore, Trinity Community Hospital aims at ensuring that patient care is made the priority and is consistent of high quality to ensure that the environment is not only safe for the staff and patients but the visitors too. This will ensure that hospital operations are conducted efficiently, thereby, ensuring that service excellence for patients and staff is their priority. Additionally, the institution should ensure that it creates an excellent employee atmosphere. This includes the use of organizational diversity to manage Trinity Community Hospital. Diversity management strongly influences organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Most business organizations are striving to improve their performance mainly by changing their attitudes and behavior. Therefore, Human Resource Diversity Management is seen as an important aspect through which the employee attitudes can be transformed, thereby increasing employee and organizational performance. This implies that there is an overwhelming requirement for all organizations to prioritize diversity management in HRM. In addition, HRDM enhances greater marketing capability and reduces ethnic discrimination. The top management must establish an organizational structure that acknowledges diversity and commits its resources to implement diversity policies. However, the policies established must comply with the state and federal guidelines. The management should ensure that the accreditation of the health facility by the joint commission or any other accrediting agencies is sustained (King et al., 2010).
Conclusion
Evidently, a community health assessment is imperative when planning public and private healthcare programs. Through such assessments, the major risk factors affecting the health facility are identified. Additionally, the causes and the prevalence rate of certain diseases in a community are identified and thereby, the appropriate actions required to address the health challenges in the community hospital are established. The health assessment conducted at the Trinity Community Hospital targeted cancer, orthopedic and cardiovascular medical services.
Trinity Community Hospital is located in the southeast United States. It was established twenty-seven years ago on a 25-acre campus. It is a 150-bed facility. The health facility offers medical services such as internal medicine, gastroenterology, urology, cardiovascular medicine, general surgery, gynecology, and neurology. In addition, the health facility supports basic medical services are available. These include laboratory, radiology, pharmacy, respiratory therapy, and physical therapy. The reputation of the hospital is rated above average. The health facility is only renowned for its excellence in offering its services. Particularly, the nurses are competent and committed to providing services to the patients.
Successful implementation of the five-year strategic plan described above will dramatically increase and improve the financial performance of Trinity Community Hospital. Additionally, the institution will create an excellent employee atmosphere by incorporating organizational diversity in its management. The management will ensure that the accreditation of the health facility by the joint commission or any other accrediting agencies is sustained thereby improving the health facility market share. Most importantly, is that the hospital will make the most advanced medical services and approaches for prevention, diagnosis, and disease treatment accessible to thousands in the hospital neighborhood.
References
Anon. (2010a). Trinity community Hospital- Board profile. Jasper, FL: Trinity Community Hospital.
Anon. (2010b). Five- Year program plan. Jasper, FL: Trinity Community Hospital.
Kathiek, A. (2010). Trinity Community Hospital: A patient centered facility. Jasper, FL: Trinity Community Hospital.
King et al. (2010). Why organizational and community diversity matter: Representativeness and the emergence of incivility and organizational performance. Academy of Management Journal, 54(6), 1103-1118.
Knight, J. (2010a). Community health needs assessment. Jasper, FL: Trinity Community Hospital.
Knight, J. (2010b). Position overview- CEO Trinity community Hospital. Jasper, FL: Trinity Community Hospital.
Knight, J. (2010c). Trinity community hospital fact sheet. Jasper, FL: Trinity Community Hospital.