Case Study Analysis Assignment
Background Statement
Employees of a healthcare organization serve as the point of connection between patients and the facility’s leadership. The type of care that is offered by healthcare professionals usually determines the level of satisfaction that patients will experience. The given case study describes human resource issues and their impacts on patient flow at Major Medical Center. The facility is one of the three general acute care hospitals located in Bay City. Built 10 years ago in the western suburban area, Major Medical Center has 185-bed capacity adequately staffed with healthcare professionals. Ms. Suzette Jones, the Chief Patient Experience Officer and Mr. Robert Tandy, the Manager for Patient Accounts, are responsible for the operations that support crucial processes at Major Medical Center. However, poor customer service in Patient Accounts has negatively affected Major’s performance in the recent past. As reported in the case study, Major’s occupancy has dropped to 52% from 65%. The number of patients who are willing to recommend the organization’s services to others and the hospital’s satisfaction rating have also declined significantly. Both Ms. Jones and Mr. Tandy have proposed the implementation of customer service or a patient experience training program among the staff members of the Patient Accounts to improve their knowledge and skills regarding how best they can provide services to patients.
Major Problem and Secondary Issues
A detailed review of the issue has revealed that there has been a persistent rise in the number of complaints presented by patients and their families in relation to the poor services in the Patient Accounts. Therefore, the major problem at Major Medical Center is poor human resource management evidenced by the lack of employee training on effective customer service. Employees in Patient Accounts are reported to be rude, indifferent to the questions presented by customers, and provide inconsistent information to patients on issues related to bills and charges. This has resulted in poor customer service by employees deployed in the Patient Accounts working area. Secondary impacts associated with this problem is poor patient satisfaction as evidenced by a reduction in the number of patients who are willing to recommend the organization’s services to others, and the overall hospital satisfaction rating. Mr. Tandy acknowledges that there are staff issues in Patient Accounts. The primary cause of the identified problem is the lack of clear organizational policies to direct periodic customer service training for both new hires and existing employees (Babaei et al., 2022). The overall effect of the problem is reduced patient satisfaction. Patients who experience reduced satisfaction from the services that they are receiving from the hospital are unwilling to return to the facility, hence the observed decrease in occupancy to 52% from 65%.
Role
Managers play a key role in identifying management issues and implementing relevant strategies to generate meaningful improvement in their organizations. A senior manager in the human resources department is best suited to address the human resource issues at Major Medical Center. According to Dawes and Topp (2022), senior managers possess leadership competencies that they can apply to improve organizational performance. For example, they have stewardship competencies that they utilize to proper direction for their organizations. Additionally, among other competencies, senior managers play a key role in workforce development and retention. For example, they participate in the design and implementation of staff training programs aimed at improving employees’ knowledge and skills in specified areas of practice. The senior manager at Major Medical Center will influence policy reforms in the organization to support the implementation of customer service training for both new and existing employees. The main advantage of choosing the Senior Manager for the role is that the senior manager possesses the experience and competencies required to effectively influence change in an organization (Dawes & Topp, 2022). However, the main disadvantage of choosing the Senior Management role is that the incumbent might have other responsibilities to attend to, thereby lowering the speed at which the problem identified at Major Medical Center will be addressed. From the senior management position, the manager will direct a policy change in Patient Accounts.
Organizational Strengths and Weaknesses
Major Medical Center relies on its strength to address the problems it is currently facing. Additionally, it needs to understand and address the major weaknesses that might hinder the successful implementation of an intervention to improve management and employee outcomes (Sorensen et al., 2021). The key strength of the organization in relation to the major problem is committed leadership that is focused on working collaboratively on relevant reforms to improve organizational performance (Wei, 2021). For example, Ms. Jones has worked closely with Mr. Ryan Smith, the Customer Service Analyst to collect Major’s HCAHPS survey data which has revealed the severity of the current problem. Again, Ms. Jones and Mr. Tandy have jointly agreed that customers service/ patient experience training program should be implemented with Patient Accounts Staff to improve their customer service skills. The Chief Executive Office of the facility has approved the training program which demonstrates his commitment to change.
However, limited involvement in organizational assessment is a major weakness that might prevent Major Medical Center from realizing its objectives. When assessing their health interventions and the impacts of healthcare delivery processes, it is imperative that healthcare organizations involve those who are impacted directly by such interventions (Sommer et al., 2021). Additionally, conducting periodic assessments helps an organization to identify the actual impacts of various processes and identify priority issues to be addressed before negative outcomes are realized. Periodic assessment of services could have revealed the problems in Patient Accounts early enough. The organization could have used the data to inform relevant decisions about how to improve customer service.
Solutions and Recommendations
The problem at Major Medical Center is mainly attributed to ineffective human resource management strategies. Employee development and training on customer service or patient experience is the best intervention that will help to solve the problem that the organization is currently facing (Dawes & Topp, 2022). The management style that is effective for the situation is the ability to identify employees’ skill and knowledge gaps and to develop interventions to address those gaps (Minghua, 2022). The specific research that applies to this solution is a study conducted by Nafari and Rezaei (2022). Findings from the study indicate that hospital managers should consider implementing human resource strategies such as staff training in order to improve hospital performance.
The other solution that Major Medical Center can consider is to improve its organizational policy to include staff training for both new and existing employees about issues related to customer service and patient experience. A transformational leadership style will enable the senior manager to work with relevant stakeholders to implement the proposed solution (Sorensen et al., 2021). The specific research that applies to this solution is that of Sorensen et al. (2021). The authors support the importance of making organizational policy reforms that match existing needs.
Major Medical Center should consider implementing the two solutions together owing to their positive benefits. Precisely, the senior manager should provide staff training to staff about customer service. The manager should also integrate customer service training into organizational policy to enhance its execution to Patient Accounts employees (Nafari & Rezaei, 2022; Sorensen et al., 2021). The main advantage of considering the two programs is that the action will help the organization to have a team of employees who adequately understand customer service. However, the option is disadvantageous in that it requires huge amounts of finances which the organization might not have at this time.
Evaluation
Evaluation is the best way through which an organization can assess whether a given intervention or program is generating the desired outcomes. The metric that Major Medical Center should follow is to train 100% of Patient Accounts employees in the next three months. The measurement should begin after the successful implementation of the training program (Kaczmarek & Romaniuk, 2020). The evaluation will be collected from the training register as well as from participants’ self-reports. The baseline, target, and timeframe for the chosen metric are zero employees trained, 100% of employees trained, and 3 months respectively. The rationale for choosing the named metric is that all employees in the Patient Accounts should receive training to be able to provide customer service that will improve patients’ experience.
References
Dawes, N., & Topp, S. M. (2022). Senior manager leadership competencies for quality residential aged care: an Australian industry perspective. BMC Health Services Research, 22(1), 508. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-07911-9
Kaczmarek, K., & Romaniuk, P. (2020). The use of evaluation methods for the overall assessment of health policy: potential and limitations. Cost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E, 18, 43. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12962-020-00238-4
Minghua H. (2022). Role of efficient human resource management in managing diversified organizations. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 864043. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.864043
Nafari, E., & Rezaei, B. (2022). Relationship between human resources strategies and organizational performance based on the balanced scorecard in a public hospital in Iran: a cross-sectional study. BMC Health Services Research, 22(1), 363. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-07767-z
Sommer, I., Titscher, V., Szelag, M., & Gartlehner, G. (2021). What are the relevant outcomes of the periodic health examination? A comparison of citizens’ and experts’ ratings. Patient Preference and Adherence, 15, 57–68. https://doi.org/10.2147/PPA.S281466
Sorensen, G., Peters, S. E., Nielsen, K., Stelson, E., Wallace, L. M., Burke, L., Nagler, E. M., Roodbari, H., Karapanos, M., & Wagner, G. R. (2021). Implementation of an organizational intervention to improve low-wage food service workers’ safety, health and wellbeing: findings from the Workplace Organizational Health Study. BMC Public Health, 21(1), 1869. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11937-9
Wei H. (2021). The development of an evidence-informed Convergent Care Theory: Working together to achieve optimal health outcomes. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 9(1), 11–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnss.2021.12.009