Week 3 Discussion
Assignment: Developing Organizational Policies and Practices
Competing needs arise within any organization as employees seek to meet their targets and leaders seek to meet company goals. As a leader, successful management of these goals requires establishing priorities and allocating resources accordingly.
Within a healthcare setting, the needs of the workforce, resources, and patients are often in conflict. Mandatory overtime, implementation of staffing ratios, use of unlicensed assisting personnel, and employer reductions of education benefits are examples of practices that might lead to conflicting needs in practice.
Leaders can contribute to both the problem and the solution through policies, action, and inaction. In this Assignment, you will further develop the white paper you began work on in Module 1 by addressing competing needs within your organization.
To Prepare:
- Review the national healthcare issue/stressor you examined in your Assignment for Module 1, and review the analysis of the healthcare issue/stressor you selected.
- Identify and review two evidence-based scholarly resources that focus on proposed policies/practices to apply to your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
- Reflect on the feedback you received from your colleagues on your Discussion post regarding competing needs.
The Assignment (4-5 pages):
Developing Organizational Policies and Practices
Add a section to the paper you submitted in Module 1. The new section should address the following:
- Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
- Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
- Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics.
- Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies. Be specific and provide examples.
- Cite evidence that informs the healthcare issue/stressor and/or the policies, and provide two scholarly resources in support of your policy or practice recommendations.
Sample Paper – Week 3 Assignment
NURS 6053 – Developing Organizational Policies and Practices
Developing Organizational Policies and Practices
Student’s Name:
Institutional Affiliation:
Competing Needs Impacting Hospital Expenditures
The high cost of expenditure may have adverse effects on the performance of an organization. The reason for this is that healthcare organizations need funds for them to operate effectively. As such, the high rate of expenditure means that these facilities remain at a critical point regarding their financial stability, thus, negatively impacting the delivery of care and patient outcomes (Woolhandler et al., 2014). Many competing needs impact the high levels of expenditure incurred by healthcare organizations. The first one is the need by the facility to meet customer expectations, and thus, achieving customer satisfaction. This is a good move because the performance of any hospital depends on its ability to meet the expectations of its customers. This is achieved by offering high-quality services to every client they have. To achieve all these, the organization has to be ready to employ sufficient staff members, has to bring in highly qualified and experienced professionals, and has to ensure that it has enough resources in the form of equipment. All these require heavy investment. An organization needs to have modern equipment, which is very expensive in the market.
Additionally, the cost of hiring qualified and experienced staff is high as compared to average candidates. All these are done by the management as they seek to guide the organization towards the achievement of its goals. Another need here is that of minimizing costs while maximizing profits (Bodenheimer, 2015). For an organization to remain competitive, it has to be financially stable. This depends on the profit margin. The success of a manager is not based solely on customer satisfaction but also on the financial performance of the organization. Therefore, as the leaders and managers strive to meet customer expectations, they also have to ensure that they meet the shareholder expectations. This is a dilemma being faced by organizations as they seek to remain competitive in promoting public health.
This brings in another need whereby as managers seek to maximize profits, employees also want to work in a conducive and better environment. Employees are the most important stakeholders whose productivity determines the performance of an organization. As such, they ought to be treated well, and their interests are taken into consideration. The management may try to reduce the number of employees and purchase cheaper equipment as they seek to cut down expenditure (Sheikh et al., 2015). On the other hand, employees will not accept to be overworked, and they need better equipment for them to deliver high-quality services. The conflicting and competing needs may significantly impact the operational costs of an organization. In such cases, the management needs to find a solution that does not make some parties worse off.
Relevant Policy or Practice
The hospital has adopted various practices aimed at minimizing expenditure, and thus, increase the profit margin. One of the most recognizable practices is the move to embrace technology in most of the operations. The management has divided to cut down the operational and administrative costs by incorporating new technology. This is a good move, considering the dynamics of the modern business environment. The managers assessed the administrative processes of the organization and identified the areas that could be automated through the use of technology (Himmelstein et al., 2014). This significantly reduced the number of employees in the hospital.
In addition to this, the hospital adopted the use of electronic health record systems and other modern technology to minimize the human resources needed. This was done with the consideration of how the move could affect the delivery of services and organizational performance. Also, the adoption of modern technology ensured that human errors are minimized, operational costs are reduced, and the delivery of services is improved (Sloan & Hsieh, 2017). These are the basic factors that the management looked at. With this, several employees lost their jobs. To some people, the move was too severe. However, to the management and the shareholders, the move was necessary because the organization needed sufficient finances for it to run effectively.
Ethical Considerations
Several ethical considerations exist when it comes to the use of technology in the healthcare setting. This is due to the sensitivity of the information and the activities related to health. One of the major ethical considerations is accountability and ethics of work. The use of modern technology has improved accountability and work ethics among healthcare workers. This is due to the increased accessibility and completeness of data records that have been filed electronically (Ozair et al., 2015). With this, professionals can easily follow every detail regarding a given patient. This included diagnoses, health history, symptoms, medical interventions, as well as their effects. Information can also be displayed on computer screens. In addition to this, the data display can be supported by computer-based decision-making tools and basic quality standards. Such things significantly influence accountability of healthcare professionals.
Another ethical consideration is confidentiality or privacy encroachment. This has been the major concern with the new technology. Usually, medical records contain sensitive personal information that needs to be protected by all means. Sharing such data with a third or unauthorized party is a violation of professional ethics and patient’s trust. Modern technology offers several opportunities for the encroachment of the patient-physician relationship. This is because of the existence of many players in the healthcare sector. Once data has been entered and stored electronically, it can be retrieved at any time and by any employee in the hospital (Ozair et al., 2015). This threatens the privacy of patient information, which is a clear violation of the ethical regulations in the sector. Under the issue of privacy, information stored using modern technology can be easily retrieved by hackers. This means that an organization needs to have strong and competent IT professionals to deal with the threat of hackers and protect patient information.
Recommendations for Policy Changes
The facility has done well in its attempt to address the issue of high expenditure levels. The incorporation of new technology has not just addressed the problem but has also improved the delivery of services and patient safety. With this, there has been a positive impact on organizational performance. However, more needs to be done to ensure that the policy does not compromise the ethics of healthcare workers in the hospital. As such, there is a need for policy changes to deal with ethical considerations used. Here, new technology should not completely replace the workforce in the facility. There is still a need for enough staff members to deal with the increasing demand for healthcare services. People can work well with machines to improve the overall organizational performance. For instance, the IT department needs highly qualified and experienced employees who can counter any hacking attempts. This will ensure that privacy policies are not breached. Also, while adopting the new technology, it is imperative to ensure that the process does not negatively impact any stakeholders in the organization.
References
Bodenheimer, T. (2015). High and rising health care costs. Part 1: seeking an explanation. Annals of internal medicine, 142(10), 847-854.
Himmelstein, D. U., Jun, M., Busse, R., Chevreul, K., Geissler, A., Jeurissen, P., … & Woolhandler, S. (2014). A comparison of hospital administrative costs in eight nations: US costs exceed all others by far. Health Affairs, 33(9), 1586-1594.
Ozair, F. F., Jamshed, N., Sharma, A., & Aggarwal, P. (2015). Ethical issues in electronic health records: A general overview. Perspectives in clinical research, 6(2), 73.
Sheikh, A., Sood, H. S., & Bates, D. W. (2015). Leveraging health information technology to achieve the “triple aim” of healthcare reform. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 22(4), 849-856.
Sloan, F. A., & Hsieh, C. R. (2017). Health economics. MIT Press.
Woolhandler, S., Campbell, T., & Himmelstein, D. U. (2014). Costs of health care administration in the United States and Canada. New England Journal of Medicine, 349(8), 768-775.
By Day 7 of Week 3
Submit your revised paper.
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