Strategic Plan and Evaluation for a Healthcare Facility

Strategic Plan and Evaluation for a Healthcare Facility

The healthcare sector is currently flooded with safety and quality initiatives. Quality is defined as the extent to which healthcare services, whether for an individual or the general population, are highly likely to achieve the desired outcomes and are in accordance with professional standards. According to the Institute of Medicine’s report “To Err is Human,” the chances of improving healthcare quality outcomes lie in processes and systems rather than individuals. Various factors, including process variability, varying patient case mix, policy issues, and variations in provider education and experience, have all contributed significantly to the complexity of the healthcare sector, resulting in lower levels of healthcare quality. However, with the general population as its target market segment, the University of Pennsylvania Hospital can maintain its competitive advantage by providing safe, effective, patient-centred, equitable, and timely healthcare.

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Adaptive Strategy Components

Quality transformations within a healthcare facility can only be implemented within a change concept framework. A change concept must include several critical changes resulting in specific improvement ideas that all stakeholders will replicate. As part of the numerous change concepts, the first and most crucial element of the Pennsylvania hospital’s strategy is improving the healthcare services’ quality. This strategic goal will necessitate that the organization monitors quality indicators such as patient-centred care, timeliness, safety, effectiveness, efficiency, and equitable healthcare. Furthermore, the organization must ensure that patients, families, care team members, and providers are all involved in quality improvement activities. The second concept will incorporate a formal model into the quality improvement goals, with quality services as the strategic target. The third concept will be to ensure that monitoring metrics are established to evaluate efforts and outcomes (MacColl Center for Healthcare Innovation, 2013).

Furthermore, all stakeholders must understand the success metrics. A subsequent change concept promotes optimizing health information technology to achieve the strategy’s meaningful use criteria. In terms of cost, the organization’s strategic goal is to consistently adjust internal processes to pursue market-leading prices. The final component is maintaining market share by expanding into new communities, with the general public as the target market. To ensure the changes above are implemented smoothly in the facility, management must provide training and skill development programs to increase first-line participation in the strategy. Various changes in the previous areas can potentially make a difference in the quality of healthcare delivery at the University of Pennsylvania healthcare facility.

Strategy Creation

The development of a strategy begins with the affirmation of an organization’s mission and vision. The vision for the Pennsylvania facility is to “achieve and maintain the position of a leading hospital in the country in terms of quality, cost, and efficiency, and to be the hospital of choice for patients across the country.” The mission of the Pennsylvania facility is to “contribute to a healthy community by providing patients with affordable, high-quality, and easily accessible healthcare while constantly innovating and improving services.” According to Zhang et al. findings, an organization’s senior management has the relevant skills to develop a strategy, but only with the guidance of the mission, vision, and strategic values (Zhang et al., 2012). In addition, the study suggests that insufficient guidance from a formal deployment system is the cause of limited strategy development in many organizations. As a result, the Pennsylvania facility plays a role in integrating the specified goals in the vision and mission, such as quality, affordable, easily accessible, cost-effective healthcare, and innovation in deploying the organizational system and structure, to reflect the goals in day-to-day operations. It will only be a matter of time before the organization achieves market leadership.

Translation of Strategy

According to Zhang et al., a strategy is meaningless unless it is translated into specific measures, initiatives, or targets. A strategy map depicts the quality delivery process from various perspectives and timescales. While senior management is responsible for translating strategic objectives and themes, healthcare practitioners are accountable for most strategy implementation (Zhang et al., 2012). As a result, the facility’s role is to continuously adjust internal processes until all units are comfortable with the new strategy’s set targets. The ability to cascade suggestions throughout the organization is critical to the success of a strategic plan. As a result, comprehensive organizational awareness and implementation training is essential for the strategy implementation process.

Organizational Structure and Culture Alignment

One major cause of strategy failure within an organization is a failure to involve the stakeholders who oversee strategy implementation. Zhang et al. acknowledge that while the strategy is reinforced by corporate staff who supervise initiative deployment, middle-level management and lower-level employees may be critical of the initiatives. Strategic implementation is a top-down process in which the top is responsible for direction while the bottom manages the implementation process (Zhang et al., 2012). Because Pennsylvania Hospital comprises several business units, strategy implementation must include corporate, business, functional, and operational strategy. Traditionally, any significant change in a single unit of an organization necessitates deep and ongoing engagement across the entire organization.

Changes within an organization have an impact on the entire system. While the intention is to facilitate improvements, there is a risk of unintended negative consequences. It is unlikely that the whole corporate team will anticipate the effects and outcomes of a system change. As a result, management is responsible for tracking potential impacts and assisting team members in adjusting to changes because, if the entire team adapts to the changes, it is even easier to reflect the strategy’s progress (Zhang et al., 2012). Strategy implementation necessitates a shift in organizational practices. As a result, healthcare providers and the entire staff must review their roles and processes to identify opportunities for improvement.

Furthermore, identifying inherent discomfort and encouraging preparation is an effective method of mitigating potential occurrences of uneasiness and organizing a framework that will boost employees’ confidence. Large-scale changes in facilities such as the Cleveland Clinic in the United States and Germany’s Schon Klinik that began a few years ago have successfully overturned the institutions’ value agenda[CITATION Por13 l 1033]. As a result, as long as the Pennsylvania facility adjusts to the strategic goals, the process will be successful.

Strategy Execution Operations

A solid quality management execution plan spans the pre-service, point-of-service, and after-service stages of service delivery. The University of Pennsylvania Hospital has requirements for patient and family member consultation, which covers the pre-service location, safety, adherence to professional standards at the point of service, and follow-up, which covers the after-service area. Furthermore, the strategy can only be successful if it is fully integrated across multiple departments, such as human resources, information technology, and financial requirements. At this point, the goal should be to develop supportive arrangements, decision-making processes, information and control systems, and training programs to oversee the strategy’s implementation (MacColl Center for Healthcare Innovation, 2013). As a result, senior management is responsible for aligning the improvement strategy with all short-, medium-, and long-term projects. Many methods will address such requirements, including awareness creation, facilitation, participation, manipulation, negotiation, and clear and unspoken inclinations.

The research literature recognizes various organizations’ strong ability to link long-term organizational strategy to daily operations, resource organization, strategy delivery, and management of internal resistance to change. Despite solid evidence of corporate strategy success, there is less evidence of functional strategy success. For example, Zhang et al.’s evaluation of a community healthcare service in the United Kingdom revealed effective corporate strategy performance but questionable available strategy performance (Zhang et al., 2012). This indicates that while senior management may have the ability and expertise to align the strategy with the functional units, the lack of intense involvement of all organizational units may result in inconsistency. As a result, appropriate systems necessitate adequate funding and human involvement, while skill requirements are met through information sharing and training.

Monitoring and Education

Successful implementation necessitates ongoing monitoring of the strategy’s effectiveness and external and internal environmental factors. An organization will face challenges and obstacles during the implementation process. The best way to facilitate monitoring is to hold regular meetings during operational reviews to evaluate short-term performance targets and respond to any current challenges that require immediate attention (MacColl Center for Healthcare Innovation, 2013). Furthermore, structure reviews ensure that effective critical performance indicator monitoring is an avenue toward ensuring a successful execution strategy.

According to the research literature, 64% of research participants recognise the effectiveness of strategy and operational review meetings in facilitating strategy implementation. However, there is a significant acknowledgement of the lack of distinction between strategy and operational review meetings (MacColl Center for HealthcareInnovation, 2013). The recommendations suggest that a large portion of the effort should be devoted to strategy review to keep the implementation process on track. For example, it is necessary to identify underperforming areas, develop action plans to correct them and assign responsibilities to various involved parties to ensure the targets are met. Nonetheless, operational issues are critical at this time and must be addressed during the regular operational review meetings.

External and Internal Factors Influencing Strategy Implementation

Human resources and policy are two major internal and external forces that impede strategy implementation in a healthcare facility. According to the internal environmental analysis at Pennsylvania Hospital, human resources are the most critical factor in organizational success. As previously stated, a new strategy necessitates practice transformation and system changes. The two changes require staff and management to review their roles and processes to facilitate improvements. This causes disruption of organizational patterns and, in some cases, realignment of corporate power sources (MacColl Center for HealthcareInnovation, 2013).

Furthermore, new changes within an organization may pose a risk factor of misunderstanding or total lack of understanding for all those affected by the transformation regarding the necessity of the change and what the change will accomplish. With all of the complexities mentioned above, an organization’s human resources may act as a barrier to strategic shifts in terms of resistance. From another angle, opposition stems from being perceived as inept in light of the new skills and approaches required to see the change through (MacColl Center for Healthcare Innovation, 2013).

Nonetheless, resistance can be overcome with proper management. Senior management, for example, can manage resistance by connecting and integrating the new vision with the traditional elements of what an organization does in day-to-day operations to build motivation and confidence in the organization’s ability to absorb the changes. This necessitates management being good listeners, understanding opposing viewpoints, and openly expressing limitations as an admission that there is no easy answer.

The PESTEL analysis performed at the facility, on the other hand, depicts legal factors critical to an organisational strategy’s success. Policy, in particular, is a significant issue with the ability of a given system to perform. The first impact of the policy emerges from causal hypotheses, such as how worker shortages may impact the power of a given system to succeed or how high medical care or household income prices may affect strategic implementation performance (Berman & Bitran, 2011). Second, any process implemented within a healthcare facility must consider the policies that govern a country’s healthcare system. With healthcare policymaking in the United States known for contentious debates, alignment requirements are likely to pose a significant barrier to a strategy. Because no organization can factor, the best approach is to align the elements of the system elementsstraints of a nation’s healthcare policy.

The World Bank found that alignment and management of financial, human, and physical resources are the most challenging but critical for the success of a strategy in healthcare systems in a 2011 review of healthcare strategies within healthcare facilities in China and Turkey (Berman & Bitran, 2011). Even though the study’s descriptive models only characterize the importance of the above models individually, they do not describe how they can interact or whether one outperforms the other (Berman & Bitran, 2011). Regarding policy influence, the report indicates that recommendations based outside of a country’s policy paradigms are more likely to fail. This suggests that the government plays a vital role in healthcare reform. As a result, Pennsylvania hospitals can resist policy barriers by adjusting their strategy within the constraints of state and federal healthcare policy.

Analytical Tool for Strategy Evaluation

Pennsylvania Hospital has three options for determining the effectiveness of the strategy. The first option is to evaluate performance outcomes such as healthcare quality, customer satisfaction, and cost control. The second option entails evaluating the organizational reaction to the strategy regarding resistance or withstanding. The third option is to use a performance analysis tool. The Business Scorecard is the most appropriate analytical performance measurement tool for a strategic healthcare change (BSC). Since its inception in 1992, the device has helped assess performance in various organisations, including several healthcare providers[CITATION Hug08 l 1033]. Because the device necessitates measurements, a healthcare facility must include systematic and sporadic data collection and examination from the administrative unit, healthcare provision unit, financing area, and households.

The instrument has four dimensions. The first dimension is the performance of the healthcare system. The dimension’s outcome measures include health status, financial security, and customer satisfaction, while intermediate outcome measures include access, quality, and efficiency (Berman & Bitran, 2011). The second dimension is the dimension of performance evaluation. The dimensions determine only two outcomes based on the collected data: excellent or poor performance. The third dimension entails an examination of the factors that influence performance. The dimension evaluates specific performance areas, such as financing, delivery, governance, and the overall state of the institution. The final dimension is policy intervention to improve performance. The performance metrics for the dimension include health system control knobs, financing, payment, regulation, and persuasion. All four dimensions provide evidence-based information that can be used to develop a corrective action plan for an organization.

The World Health Organization used the tools listed above to conduct a performance assessment framework that sought the relationship between performance and performance improvement measures in the United Kingdom from the perspective of patient healthcare quality. The tool successfully developed standard targets and implementation mechanisms that could monitor and support organizational change in various healthcare facilities (Berman & Bitran, 2011). Berman and Bitran also acknowledge the tool’s role in assisting with provider knowledge improvement, consumer empowerment, external oversight, and regulation (Berman & Bitran, 2011). As a result, it is debatable whether the BCG tool will be able to evaluate the entire strategy.

Conclusion

Safety, quality, and equitable and patient-centred healthcare services define today’s demand. The implication is that an effective healthcare strategy must address all of the requirements listed above. However, accommodating the factors alone will not result in a successful strategy; a successful structure will ensure alignment with the organizational structure, culture, and operational units, as well as an evaluation tool. If the University of Pennsylvania Hospital can meet the above criteria, it will have a better chance of becoming a leader in the US healthcare market.

Similar Post: Using Technology to Promote Patient Safety and Quality Outcomes

References

Berman, P., & Bitran, R. (2011). Health Systems Analysis for Better Health System Strengthening. HNP Discussion Paper, 1-68.

Hughes, R. (2008). Tools and Strategies for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety. In R. e. Hughes, Patient safety and quality: An evidence-based handbook for nurses. Vol. 3 . Rockville: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

MacColl Center for Healthcare Innovation (2013). Quality Improvement Strategy Pt1: Tools to Make and Measure Improvement. Safety Net Medical Home Initiative, 1-43.

Porter, M. (2013). The Strategy that Will Fix Healthcare. Harvard Business Review.

Zhang, S., Bamford, D., Moxham, C., & Dehe, B. (2012). Strategy Deployment Systems within the UK Healthcare Sector: A Case Study. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 61(8), 863–880. Doi: 10.1108/17410401211277129.

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Strategic Plan and Evaluation for a Healthcare Facility

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