Middleville Regional Healthcare
The governing board of Middleville Regional Health Care has responsibility of setting policies, overall decision making, monitoring, hiring, evaluating, and overseeing the responsibilities of the managing director in addition to other senior executives such as the chief accounting officer. Other roles include authorizing and determining payments and any necessary expenditure as stipulated in the health facility’s financial plan. On the other hand, the board has the executive function of choosing the composition of committee members such as advisory committee, audit and/or remuneration committee. It has the direct responsibility of planning the facility’s objectives including strategic planning. Although the board members have no direct role in the day to day management of the health center, it remains liable for the policies, effects, failures, and actions taken under their watch. Under the strategic initiatives, responsibility, and involvement, the board takes the overall task of ensuring the evaluation is undertaken according to its decision, which is to evaluate the health facility’s strategic performance. The board has to make sure that the consulting firm understands its mandate of appraisal and weighing the facility’s performance in regards to the areas of its desire, which include Marketing, Financing, Information Technology, and Human Resource Management.
Policy Making
From ensuring efficient policy execution, the board has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the consulting firm focuses on the board’s desire to evaluate the departments as mentioned earlier in regards to strategic performance (Porter, 2010). The board, therefore, has the role of writing down clear set agenda covering the evaluation exercise to help the consulting firm achieve its purpose in the exercise. At the same time, the board has the responsibility of reviewing the consulting firms’ work on the evaluation regularly, in addition to reviewing the set policies.
Decision-Making
It involves making the necessary choices for and about the health facility’s evaluation exercise regarding the overall mission, vision, and strategies as outlined in their policies (Free et al., 2013). For example, the board has the mandate to ensure that the vision and mission statement of Middleville Regional Health Care is in line with the evaluation exercise. As the evaluation proceeds, the board also has the mandate to engage in and with other stakeholders on delegating necessary tasks to them such as support structures or strategies (Porter, 2010).
Oversight
Despite the fact that the consulting firm is an independent firm hired by Middleville Regional Health Care, the board members have the responsibility of taking an oversight role during the evaluation exercise (Free et al., 2013). As an oversight body, they ensure that all that takes place during the exercise is under their responsibility, for example, setting the quality, ensuring the necessary mechanisms are in place, monitoring implementation of the appraisal exercise, and setting the necessary policies guiding the entire evaluation.
Quantitative Measurements
Measuring performances enable organizations to understand how successful it is undertaking its tasks and achieving its goals. It also offers an analysis of some of the changes that can be undertaken to improve performance in the type of care provided (Swayne et al., 2012). Additionally, it allows the providers on what is working well for the facility and additional information that can be shared out and what they can learn from the achievement. Performance measurement within a health care facility, therefore, aims at a consistent collection of information to review if the desired tasks or processes are performed and if the preferred results are achieved. For example, in Middleville Regional Health Care, the performance measurement will analyze the accomplishment of a department by making a comparison with what is taking place with the initial intention of the facility. Middleville Regional Health Care can use discrepancy in performance, the cost of health care services, and the experience of the patient during treatment to analyze its performance measurement.
Patient Experience
Middleville Regional Health Care can use the experiences of the patient to measure its performance, especially in the inpatient and outpatient treatment. The above measures can provide an indicator of the health facility’s performance while caring for the patients with the aim of improving its performance against its key competitors, mostly Brierfield that records a higher number of admissions than Middleville Regional Health Care. Getting patients’ feedback on their experience while under treatment at the facilitator can offer an insight into Middleville Regional Health Care performance level against its set targets and its overall key objectives on service delivery. The measurement collected on patient experience may be useful in harmonizing the health facility’s goals with the patient’s expectation during care. According to Swayne et al. (2012), process indicator may offer a precise insight into the facility’s level of patient care. For example, the process indicator is used to determine the total number of patients who received treatment at the facility and the number of services offered. The indicator can showcase the actual and precise patient experience by noting their response to the type of service they received from the hospital.
The Cost of Health Care Services Offered
The cost of health care services provided denotes to the total amount of money a patient may pay for services received at the facility. In comparison with its set goals of the financial position of the establishment, Middleville Regional Health Care can use the total amount of money received or per service to gauge its ability to achieve its set target. Result indicator can offer an insight into the facility’s performance against its set financial target while at the same time comparing the resulting cost of care to the financial goal (Swayne et al., 2012). On the other hand, results indicator may also be used to get the community’s perception of the type of service received. For example, patients may be asked to rate the level of care given out of a quantitative figure such as 5. A rating of 5/5 is good and can help the facilitator make adjustments or improvements on a given department to further improve its services. Results indicator is direct and offers a precise measurement into the level of customer satisfaction with the service received. It may provide the board the opportunity to understand the dynamics involved in patient care in comparison with the amount of money paid for a given service.
Discrepancy in Performance
The discrepancy in performance is a performance measurement that can give an insight into the disparity that a given department has in service delivery. For example, according to Swayne et al. (2012), a consistent patient care signify’s a consistent health care provision while a poor service delivery such as poor customer care service or poor attendance by the nurses may denote to the discrepancy in performance. With the use of the output indicator, the discrepancy in performance can be denoted by getting the percentage of patients who successfully completed their treatment at the facility. For example, a patient diagnosed with an ailment that requires constant attention and a visit to the facility may offer an insight into the consistency of a given department in service delivery. Completion of treatment in which case the patient made all the attendance shows a consistent service delivery while the incomplete patient participation of a given treatment may show a discrepancy in service delivery.
Recommendation to HCO
Middleville Regional Health Care should focus more on its patient service delivery to increase its admission from the current 13,000 admissions to over 20,000. With an admission capacity of 575 beds, the health care facility should have a higher admission than its closest competitor that has only 380-bed capacity but records an admission of 17,000 patients. With a great OP visits, the board needs to establish and turn around the admission number to match the OP visits. The board should thus focus on establishing the low rate of admission. On the other hand, the board needs to restructure its personnel and do away with redundant positions that are stretching the facility’s expenses to $125,000. Although it should not form top priority to lower the personnel, it needs to remain a factor in reducing the high expenses recorded by the facility.
Investing in technology with the aim of improving service delivery is and should remain a strategic plan within the board’s responsibility for turning the health facility into a competitive health center. However, it should not come at the expense of other critical factors like lowering the costs. However, like a strategic plan for the facility to improve its competitive edge over other health services, Middleville Regional Health Care should and need to invest in a health data system that will aim at easing the backlog of information both at the registry and other departments that have a lot of paperwork. The registry should, in fact, form the core to computerizing health records and help improve service delivery.
To ease and make the process flexible, the board should establish a credible database containing all patient information and at the same time create a management system that will serve as a central location for all the records within the health facility. It will computerize information such as patient data records, personnel records, payroll system, security management system, and a backup management system for the same. Middleville Regional Health Care will then invest heavily in acquiring both desktop and laptop computers to serve for the data systems. Other data equipment that the board should purchase would include servers, printers, host computers, a backup system, a multipurpose generator, and computer accessories to serve the same. Despite the enormous amount of finances involved, implementing the EMR would position Middleville Regional Health Care as a patient-oriented health facility focusing on integrating technology with health services as a key factor for its success.
Employee Retention
To promote employee satisfaction and retention, the HR department should organize for employee training in different fields of interest critical to improving services at the facility. Additionally, the HR department should consider using rewards to reinforce desirable behavior, to encourage the employees to remain dedicated at their positions of service delivery. On the other hand, easing the workload on the employees by introducing flexible working hours such as working in shifts would encourage the employees to give their best at the facility while at the same time retain them within Middleville Regional Health Care. Other incentives and strategies for keeping employees include life and health insurance plans, retirement and benefits plan, and focusing on the growth of the employees (Swayne et al., 2012). The above strategies and measures would help the HR department work with a motivated and committed staff.
References
Free, C., Phillips, G., Watson, L., Galli, L., Felix, L., Edwards, P., … & Haines, A. (2013). The effectiveness of mobile-health technologies to improve health care service delivery processes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS Medicine, 10(1), e1001363, http:// doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001362.
Porter, M. E. (2010). What is value in health care? New England Journal of Medicine, 363(26), 2477-2481.
Swayne, L. E., Duncan, W. J., & Ginter, P. M. (2012). Strategic management of health care organizations. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.