Case Assignment: Health Administration

Posted: April 4th, 2019

Case Assignment: Health Administration
Healthcare remains to be a very complex and rapidly changing industry. There are generally two forms of governance in most healthcare facilities that preside the day-to-day and long-term leadership, planning, and management (Figueroa et al., 2019). In hospitals, particularly the two include the corporate section and the clinical, both of which are interdependent and function together to accomplish patient care. Quality care remains the number one priority for most healthcare facilities across the US and the world. This has been shown to achieve more profit, growth, efficiency, and consistent performance for the healthcare institution. This report highlights the role of the healthcare administrator in the context of a hospital. Health administration professionals mainly work to institute, lead and create management protocols for a hospital.
Roles of Health Administrators (as Managers and Administrators) in Hospitals
Hospital networks are usually large with various moving parts; as such, a health administrator’s role is tailored to work closely with all departments and individuals to ensure the patient receives the best care possible. Guo, Hermanson, and Farnsworth (2016) point out that health administrators’ decisions significantly impact the effectiveness of quality patient care and delivery; thus, the organization’s success depends heavily on their ability to lead, define and prioritize organizational goals. Health administrator’s roles are defined into two categories- short and long term. Summarily, the role of a health administrator within a hospital includes designing the budget, managing hiring, training evaluation of human resources, establishing hospital rates, procuring funding and critical partnership, developing organizational strategy, ensuring compliance with regulatory policies, developing hospital policies, and last but not least streamlining financial and operations activities and practices. In the shorter term, health administrators are tasked with overseeing the day-to-day administrative operations and create strategies to supervise medical services.
Why departmentalize and Types of Process Managed in Hospital
Being complex organizations, hospitals have various activities that need to be engaged to ensure better patient care. Categorically, the role of the management usually spans across a wider range of departments to create adequate strategies and modes of supervision. Healthcare administration is important as it keeps the cost down, and it acts as an oversight preventing irregular and illegal practices, all for the benefit of the patient’s overall care. Quality is of the utmost emphasis, and for the most part, the majority of these healthcare administrators institute multidisciplinary programs to ensure seamless practices across departments. Departmentalization comes into focus, especially in defining the hospital decision-making structure wherein the health administrators usually play an important role. According to Govindarajan (2019), each department (corporate and clinical) plays an important purpose critical to the organization; thus, there is a greater need for attention to be paid to their respective process units. Departments represent different process units or comprehensive unit-based process (CUP) teams. Were the decision making in a healthcare facility such as a hospital centralized, more burden would be placed on the system’s ability to perform and not on the people, as such aspect such as miscommunication, lack of leadership, and conflict could have ultimately arose and created a conflict which would hinder the underlying goal of quality patient care, which opens the hospital to many liabilities such as loss and lawsuits. Departmentalization as such provides the hospital with a variety of advantages such as (Govindarajan, 2019; Figueroa et al., 2019):
1. It provides the hospital with the ability to follow the principles of occupational specialization (allowing each individual to concentrate on achieving what they specialized in).
2. It eases talent acquisition, training, hiring, and supervision of the general specialties within the hospital.
3. It provides administrators with a greater ability to maintain oversight into hospital functions and apply performance appraisal, which is critical in identifying performance gaps.
4. It allows for logical reflection of functions as such maintain the organizational discipline of workers relative to their qualifications and levels of achievement.
Being a large organization, hospitals of processes that compel the need for management. The above function of departmentalization work to outline the underlying complexity within a hospital as a large and dynamic healthcare facility. According to Jaya et al. (2018), these processes that require management to include:
1. Access to patient information and communication
2. Patient tracking and registry (EMR/ EHR systems are complex and very sensitive and require a powerful oversight authority)
3. Patient care and management
4. Human resource processes, pay disbursement, etc.
5. Test referral and tracking
6. External activity coordination (funding and establishing a strategic partnership with other essential authorities)
7. Quality improvement management (performance appraisal etc.)
Role of Communication in Hospital Administration
Hospitals are a very dynamic working environment with a variety of departments all working towards a similar goal. They are also managed and administered overall by various stakeholders from the specialized practitioners, staff, cultural, economic, political, and social advisors, all of which are motivated by their interests but with one main goal- quality patient care. There is a need to establish a strategic system in which all voices are heard, and no single voice undermines the other within the decision-making structures to ensure the minimization of conflict of interest. The nature of fragmentation of the healthcare system, such as the hospital, requires better communication and collaboration between the different departments to achieve high-quality care (Figueroa et al., 2019). Communication can be manifested by adopting technological innovation, regularly scheduled training, good policies, all of which are aimed at harmonization and capacity building. All these functions ensure that any changes in health policies and regulations do not challenge managers and leaders in emphasizing the delivery of high and quality care to patients. Communication in hospitals as such is important as it allows for care providers to protect patient (and the hospital from liability), improve day to day operations creating efficiency and harmony within the parallel teams, allow patients, as well as physicians, increased access to their medical histories (which is critical in providing diagnosis, limiting double tests, and tracking patient care). Overall, communication reduces the chances of error in the clinical section and the corporate section of the hospital.
Jobs to be Filled Under Health Administration
1. Program/ Project Coordinator: This special management position allows an individual to develop plans and coordinate activities, programs, and projects within the general hospital setting. The position allows for project administration and operation for specialized programs. It involves coordinating technical assistance, administrative and managerial staff with a key focus on assigned project operations.
2. Practice Operations Manager: This position situates an individual in the clinical setting to plan, develop, coordinate, implement and manage all medical office administrative functions and related medical office development projects except actual patient care. It allows an individual to interact with and oversee physicians.
3. Quality and Patient Safety Manager: Works in collaboration with the quality assurance department to oversee clinical quality and patient activity safety and adhere to governmental policies and regulations. The position is essential for leadership development in areas of quality and patient safety. It situates an individual to participate in the development, measurement, and monitoring of strategic initiatives, all of which amount to clinical quality and safety outcomes.

References
Harrison, J. P., Lee, A., & Scott, J. (2021). Healthcare Administration: Managing Organized Delivery Systems. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L. E. (2020). The strategic management of healthcare organizations. John Wiley & Sons.
Figueroa, C., Harrison, R., Chauhan, A., & Meyer, L. (2019). Priorities and challenges for health leadership and workforce management globally: a rapid review. BMC Health Services Research, 19(1). DOI: 10.1186/s12913-019-4080-7
Govindarajan, R. (2019).

Moving on from CUSP to CUP: empowering multidisciplinary teams and integrating them in the management structure of hospital organization

. Journal Of Multidisciplinary Healthcare, Volume 12, 257-268. DOI: 10.2147/jmdh.s198494
Guo, R., Hermanson, P., & Farnsworth, T. (2016). Study on Hospital Administrators’ Beliefs and Attitudes toward the Practice of Evidence-Based Management. Hospital Online Write My Essay For Me Help From The Best Academic Writing Website – Topics, 94(3-4), 62-66. DOI: 10.1080/00185868.2016.1258886
Jaya, A., Schapira, M., Huo, H., & Werner, R. (2018). Organizational Processes and Patient Experiences in the Patient-centered Medical Home. Medical Care, 56(6), 497-504. DOI: 10.1097/mlr.0000000000000910