Health Care Management and Leadership

Good management and leadership are essential for the success of any activity. They are important in achieving the set objectives in an organization. In our case, health, good leadership and management are also required. Poor leadership and management in health institutions can cause the loss of lives. Lives are important and therefore the directors or managers in such institutions should practice good managerial and leadership skills. Health care systems are normally complex, and therefore they need a good leader who will ensure the effectiveness of the field of management in the health field.

Management activities first day in the office

In the introduction, one will see that leadership and management are essential for success. Taking an office responsibility to lead is very vital. In this case, the new director is taking over an office, in which the former director resigned as a result of the repeated cases of death in the neonate ward, and other problems caused by lack of management and leadership.

Taking over as a leader of this hospital requires one to work harder by using the qualities of a good leader to ensure that the services of this hospital are improved to satisfy the needs of the people who benefit from these hospitals. Therefore the managerial activities from the first day will be important for the improvement of this hospital.

During the first day, various managerial activities are to be carried out. They are important because the leader is new to everybody, the environment is new and he or she needs to get vital information about the place to help plan for other managerial activities in the coming days for the transformation of the place (Daft and Marcic 13).

These activities normally contribute to the first impression of an individual to others and they are important. Management means working with others and therefore the first day normally builds your relationship with other workers. This relationship is important for it affects how you will interact in the days to come. These are the activities to be done on the first day.

Acknowledging the people you find in the hospitals that are going to work with you. It is good to greet and introduce yourself to the people you are meeting for the first time. Recognizing your team is very critical. It helps you familiarize yourself with them and this will help them see you as friendly a thing that will help them to be open in addressing the matters affecting the hospital. For example in our case, through this activity, one will be able to understand the representatives of various departments such as the laboratory and radiology which contribute to the effective working of this hospital system.

Finding out areas that need to be changed and people needs to work best. In a place of work, there are things that the workers present and may need to be changed for the improvement of the place (Harworth 1). Finding out these areas will help you plan on changing the areas that your predecessor failed. In this hospital, some of the areas that require change are the increased repeated death in the neonate ward, shortage of medical staff and low-quality services.

Listening to what you are being told. It is good for a manager to show good listening qualities on the first day. Listening will help you know where to build in the organization. In this hospital through listening one will know how the hospital has been affected and try to conclude why the hospital renders poor services to people. When told something, a manager can ask a question and this can prove he is a good listener.

The first day is important in establishing a good relationship with the team you are going to work with. Therefore the managerial activities carried out on the first day should gear towards building a positive and good relationship between the manager and the team.

Solutions for problem of shortage of medical staff, and skill mix

The problem of medical staff shortage and skill mix is very critical in a hospital. They negatively affect service delivery in the hospital. In this case the following are possible solutions in this hospital:

A proper skill mix is beneficial to a health organization. Poor skill mixes according to Thomas, is one of the factors that result in poor patient care (10). When properly addressed it is important because, health care labor is intensive, making it to be costly and hence a proper skill mix helps a manager to have a productive staff within the available resources (Thomas 10).

To avoid the problem arising from an improper staff mix a manager these are the solutions: first I will identify the problems on which skill mix is the solution. I will do this by looking at the patients’ needs, the current services and outcome indicators. Second find and implement appropriate approaches in the skill mix and leave out inappropriate approaches. Last, I will ensure that during recruitment of staff only members with desirable qualities such as patience are the ones’ recruited.

A manger will be held responsible if a patient suffers harm in a situation where there is a problem of staff shortages. In this case, this hospital faces this problem and hence there is a need for solutions. The following are the possible solutions. First, create shifts to ensure there is sufficient supply of qualified staff to attend to the patients. Second, retain the current staff members who are likely to move to other fields because of stress in this hospital.

This will be by providing a good working environment. Third, recruiting new staff members in the departments that needs new workers. Last I ensure there are proper skill mixes in the hospital.

Leadership style to use in this situation

Transformational leadership style is the most relevant in this situation. The policies of this hospital need to be evaluated and even some policies changed. A good relationship is also to be developed between the management and other workers in the hospital in order to work towards shared goals.

Dealing with the issue of Neonates Deaths

In the neonate ward I will ensure that there is proper delegation of task, risk monitoring to avoid harm to patients and also ensure I address the issue of staff shortage. By recruiting more staff, workload on nurses in the neonate ward will be solved. I will also ensure the technology in this ward is current, such as the use of Meta Vision machine which is best in uninterrupted data recording. This will help reduce the repeated cases of death which may be as a result of the things addressed above.

Departmental Objectives

  1. By the end of the year 2012 the hospital should have increased its’ number of beds in wards from 327 to 400 in order to cater for the patients from this area which is densely populated and has a population of 400,000.
  2. The repeated neonate death in the neonate ward is expected to reduce by 75% by the end of August.
  3. By January 2013, 85% of patients should be satisfied by the services at the hospital, and 90% of the workers satisfied with the management of the hospital.
  4. The laboratory, radiology, and pharmacy departments by the end of this month, in making their order for their equipments, they should able to get ¾ of what they need on time of order and the remaining ¼ to be given in a period not more than 24 hours.
  5. By the beginning of the 2013/2014 financial year the rising cost of medical equipments maintenance should reduce by 60%.

Control standards

Objectives are important in making an individual to focus on achieving desired goals. When the objectives are implemented it is important to measure and see if they are giving out the value that was intended by the set objectives. To realize the effectiveness or achievement of objectives one should come up with a control standard of good practice to use in the judging the achievement of the objectives when implementation is done. Measurement of the achievements is important in completing the task addressed by the objectives (Roussel 595). Taking the following three objectives:

  1. The repeated neonate death in the neonate ward is expected to reduce by 75% by the end of August
  2. By January 2013 85% of patients should be satisfied by the services at the hospital, and 90% of the workers satisfied with the management of the hospital.
  3. By the beginning of the 2013/2014 financial year the rising cost of medical equipments maintenance should reduce by 60%.

I will take each of the objectives and identify a control standard of good practice that will be used to measure the achievement of each objective.

A control standard of good practice for the first objective: The objective is that: The repeated death in the neonate ward is expected to reduce by 75% by the end of August. I will employ the process evaluation standard. Here the effectiveness of this objective will be evaluated from routine records made from the encounter by patients. Using this standard, there will be continuous observation and checking whether the program activities are taking place.

With quality and the rate stated and time in order to achieve the stated objectives (Novick et al. 604). The activities that will be set in the neonate ward such as improvement of the technology in this ward will be expected to be done at the expected rate. With the aim of reducing death in the ward, their will be constant observation of the activities in the ward, and the workers in these ward will work closely with the administration during the implementation of the activities aimed by this objective.

A control standard practice for the second objective: This objective is that, by January 2013 85% of patients should be satisfied by the services at the hospital, and 90% of the workers satisfied with the management of the hospital. In the hospital patients should be satisfied with services being given to them. If they are not satisfied it shows that they do not trust those who provide them with the services. This normally cause harm to the patients.

In ensuring that the percent of the patients getting satisfied by the service at the hospital is raised by January 2013 I will employ outcome standard as a control standard good practice. This standard will measure and provide judgment that will conclude on the results of the program. This is an outcome standard. It gives humanistic benefits (Miner and Miner 119). A survey will be conducted at the specified time and see if the objective was achieved depending on the inputs of the program.

A control standard for the third objective: This objective is, by the beginning of the 2013/2014 financial year the rising cost of maintenance for medical equipments should reduce by 60%. Reducing the cost is one of the important things in an organization. In this hospital to achieve this objective, process standard will be the most effective.

It is important in improving the effectiveness of the project in the given time (Miner and Miner 120). In minimizing cost continuous supervision in the expenditure is important especially when new policies are introduced in the program. The where will be scrutiny of financial records continuously; this will ensure that expenses made on maintenance of medical equipments are important. Expensive equipments to maintain will be replaced by new ones which are easy to maintain.

Plan for data collection and analysis

The hospital in the case is facing problems caused by poor management and leadership activities. A program of transformation of various areas and policies is initiated in this hospital.

The problems of repeated death of neonate in the neonate ward, improper skill mix, arising cost of maintenance of medical equipments, poor services, and shortage supply of equipments are a cause for change. The satisfaction of the patients in the hospital is 45% which is below 50%. More than 50% of workers are satisfied with the management of the hospital but in this case, the patient are the key components because they are the most affected.

The problems to be addressed are as a result of management and leadership. The management is unable to control the arising problems. This problem is affecting the patients, workers in the hospital- who are loaded with work due to shortage in medical staff-, and various departments in the hospitals like the laboratory and radiology needs more attention.

This plan will monitor the achievement of the stated objectives. The goal of this plan is to ensure that the management and leadership of the hospital have been transformed in order to solve the problems affecting the hospital that most of them arise from the management. The results of this is to see improved service delivery in the hospital, reduced expenses towards maintenance of medical equipments, reduce repeated death of neonates in the neonates ward, and ensure well supply of ordered equipments in various departments in the hospital, like the laboratory and radiology department.

Their will be various interventions in the plan to realize the outcomes. Their will be recruitment of new members of the staff within the first three month of the new financial year, motivation of workers -which will be done frequently in order to make them more satisfied in the management and leadership of the hospital-, increased supervisions of various departments such as laboratory and radiology to ensure that they have what they require for their operations, and the improvement of the technology in the neonate ward. This will be done in the first two years.

Achievement of the objectives and the effectiveness of the achievements will be done through process and outcome standards. The process standard will be applied in the neonate ward, reducing costs used on the maintenance of medical facilities, and in the increase of the number of beds in the general hospital. The second standard, outcome standard, will be used in the measuring whether the patients are satisfied with the service delivery, and the satisfaction of the workers with the management and leadership of the hospital.

In the implementation of the plan data will be collected for analysis. Data that will be collected include; the response from the patients and workers about the service delivery and management effectiveness. Second data will be collected from various departments to see how they are relating with the general management.

Last, data will be collected from the neonate ward to see how death cases are reducing. This data will be collected through observations like in the case of neonate ward, from written records such as the financial records for the case reducing costs, through interview and survey in order to realize patients and workers satisfaction (Harper and Thompson 17).

In order to achieve accurate data, monitoring will be done frequently. In the neonate ward it will be done thrice a week. To the patients and workers observation will be done everyday and survey once a year. Last, in the departments, monitoring will be done once a week through getting reports from departmental managers. The two tables below shows how data will be collected (Bickle and Hamilton 1):

A table showing the number of workers and patients happy with new changes in the hospital

Percentage of those happy with changes Percentage of those not happy with the changes
Workers
Patients

A table comparing expenses on maintenance of medical equipments the year 2011 and 2012 and 2013

2011 2012 2013
Expenses on medical equipments (in US dollars)

Implementation

In the use of the outcome standard, the following is data collected in the department from the financial records. The figures below shows expenses used towards maintenance of medical equipments

Machine Maintenance cost 2010 Maintenance cost 2011 Maintenance cost 2012
MetaVision $4000 $4500 $1000
X-ray $30000 $35000 $20000

From the above information it is clear that the cost of maintenance of medical equipments has been rising from year to year except in 2012 after the implementation of the plan of reducing the resources spend on this maintenance, and only maintaining machines that the hospital is able to, as it waits to recover from leadership problems. In measure of central tendency for this data, mean will be used. Mean for maintenance cost will be calculated and find out how the cost is being controlled. When plotted on a line graph, one should achieve a normal distribution curve.

Measure of central tendency will tell the variability of the collected data. In this case mean is used and therefore in measure of variability, it will be obtained by the use of standard deviation because mean has been used to measure central tendency. Standard deviation attained will help to find the average distance of observations.

Synthesis of conclusions and recommendations

In conclusion from the data we see that the plan is working and is achieving one of its’ objective that is aiming at reducing the cost of maintenance of medical equipments. The cost of equipments maintenance was known to increase from time to time. Increasing cost of the medical equipments should be controlled because it contributes to increase in the cost medication. This in turn will prevent many patients from accessing services at the hospital.

They will then show their dissatisfaction in the hospital services. Therefore controlling the rising cost of maintenance will contribute to the transformation of the hospital polices and services. From the information obtained from financial records it is clear that the year 2012, the cost reduced for all the machines in the year 2012 compared to other previous years. The plan is therefore going to be effective if the interventions put in place are going to be made more effective.

Recommendations

  1. The hospital departmental managers should be giving their reports in time to ensure that there is enough time to correct where there is a problem in various departments.
  2. Stakeholders should be provided with information about the plan to contribute effectively towards the changes in the hospital.
  3. Patients should give their views always to ensure that they are considered in the whole implementation process.
  4. Workers should give their grievances to the managers and not being silent on them.

Works Cited

Bickle, Ian, and Paul Hamilton. Data Interpretation for Medical Students. 2nd ed. USA: Pas Test Ltd, 2011. Print.

Daft, Richard, and Dorothy Marcic. Understanding Management. 6th ed. Natorp Boulevard: Cengage Learning, 2008. Print.

Harper, David, and Andrew Thompson. Qualitative Research Methods in Mental Health and Psychotherapy: A guide for Students and Practioners. USA: John Wiley and sons, 2011. Print.

Harworth, Martin. 10 things a manager must do on the first day. ezinearticles, 2008. Web.

Miner, Jeremy, and Lynn Miner. Proposal Planning and Writing. 4th ed. USA: ABC-CLIO. Print.

Novick, Llyod, Cythia Morrow and Glen Mays. Public Health Administration: Principles for population-Based Management. 2nd ed. Sudbury: Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2008. Print.

Roussel, Linda. Management and Leadership for Nurse Administrators. 6th ed. Sudbury: Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2011. Print.

Thomas, Jenny. Survival Guide for Ward managers, sisters and Charge Nurses. Philadelphia: Elsevier Health Sciences, 2006. Print.

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