Directional Strategies

Introduction

Importance of Directional Strategies in Healthcare Organizations

Directional strategies are crucial in guiding and streamlining the operations of any given organization. These strategies are significant in healthcare organizations because they provide a framework for ensuring proper decision makings such as formulating the visions, missions, and organization's values. Directional strategies and situation analysis relate to each other in that both aid the organization to select a healthy business environment and device the most relevant plans to develop and sustain the business in a rapidly changing environment.

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Key Directional Strategies in Healthcare

There are numerous directional strategies such as retrenchment and penetration strategies. Retrenchment strategy is used by management to reduce the diversity of the corporations general operations to cut down unprofitable units while penetration strategy is aimed to lure more customers to switch to a particular brand by reducing its prices on the market. These two strategies may be linked to each other in the sense that both serve the same purpose of increasing the corporation's profit margin. Other logical strategic combinations may include critical thinking and evaluation. These are vital in decision making especially in nursing where human health is at stake. A nurse should be able to make critical decisions and evaluate the possible outcome of their decisions. A combination of strategies may be related to vision in various ways. For instance, the decisions and efforts of staffs in an organization such as a health care institution are guided and motivated by the prospects of the group. This involves creating proper directive strategies to help the organization maneuver through the changing business environment. Visionary leaders and managements should always ensure that their organizations are flexible to battle critical issues such as; the direction that the organization should take to improve its current position in the market to fulfill the vision.

Healthcare Agencies in the U.S

There are numerous healthcare agencies in the U.S in various categories such as public, private, profitable, and non-profitable organizations. Some of the organizations that fall into these categories are Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital (public and a non-profit organization). Its vision is to become the ultimate health system in the globe; mission is to improve Medicare and access to critically needed special services, and the value is to improve patients safety. A second organization is the Methodist Hospital (San Antonio). The system's mission is to serve humanity to through provision of exemplary services at an affordable cost. The vision is to be the best organization in the health care field to both the workers and patients. Its values is to uphold accountability, integrity, and compassion in their operations.

Service Quality and Cost: Private vs. Public Hospitals

A similarity in the statements of both institutions is that their primary objective is to improve the health conditions of their patients through their services. Secondly, both organizations aim to be the best healthcare facilities in the world as their visions explain. However, there are differences such as one institution is motivated by the financial gains while the other is driven by the need to promote human health.

Private hospitals offer their patients with better services and timeliness as compared to the public institutions due to a large number of patients that seek cheaper medical care in public facilities. Both hospitals aim to improve accountability in their services; however, health providers in the private facilities often violate the set medical standards. Despite public hospitals receiving subsidies from the government, they still charge small fees from their patients to facilitate their operations. In private hospitals, patients carter for all the services that they receive from the facilities ranging from doctor's appointments, treatment, and medications.

References

Swayne, L. E., Duncan, W. J., & Ginter, P. M. (2010). Strategic management of health care organizations. San Francisco (E.U.): Jossey-Bass.

Advanced Health Care Directives and Living Will. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2016, from http://www.seniorhomes.com/p/advanced-health-care-directives-and-living-will/