Essay Example on Management of Hospitals

Role of Governing Board

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The board of governors of the hospital is the face of the hospital, the body is directly involved in the day to day running of the hospital and is held accountable for any event either good or bad that occurs in the hospital. The board needs to uphold integrity when managing the resources of the hospital.

The board also does a follow up of how financial resources are used in the hospital and ensures that all funds are accounted for. It also ensures that there are adequate funds in the hospital and there is no shortage of supplies, in cases of shortage it is up to the board to approach financiers or the government for support especially when undertaking a development project.

The governing board also ensures that the mission, vision, and values of the hospital are upheld, they ensure that the tradition of the hospital institution does not fade away. The board offers continuity of the hospital institution even after the replacement of the managerial heads since the board doesnt change frequently.

The board is responsible for the appointment of senior persons who run the hospital such as the heads of departments and the chief executive of the hospital. It is the board's role to ensure that people with integrity fill the positions since the fate of the hospital depends on them.

The board is also the final step before any decision is made in the hospital before any policy is implemented by the hospital the board must approve, the board vets which policies pass and which do not and make sure that new policies are enacted.

Performance measures that can be implemented by Middleville

Middleville can check if the hospital discharges services that meet the patient's expectations. This can be gauged by checking if patients get the drugs they require, there are no delays as patients wait. This is a measure of if the hospital discharges services to the community around it. This can be easily checked by looking at the number of admissions and the number of outpatients the hospital handles. A hospital that serves a large population can be said to perform better than that that serves a smaller population.

Another performance measure can be the output of the health facility, this can be gauged by how many patients the hospital has successfully treated, the hospital can even consider giving out questionnaires where patients can comment on how well they were satisfied by the hospital's services. The general output of Middleville hospital can be measured by the number of births it delivers and the number of outpatients who leave the hospital satisfied. If a hospital provides better services than a competing hospital then the hospital can be said to perform better than the other hospital.

A third measure of the hospital's performance can be how well the hospital is equipped in terms of facilities, human resources, in this case, the employees and the capacity that the hospital can attend to. Hospitals that are well equipped with a modern infrastructure outperform hospitals will less developed infrastructure. The infrastructure of Middleville hospital can be measured by the number of beds and personnel.

Hospitals with a superior and well-developed infrastructure perform better than their competitors with less modern and adequate infrastructure and amenities.

Name Middleville Brierfield Greystone

Beds 575 380 350

Admissions 13000 17000 10000

Census 350 260 180

OP visits 221000 175000 40000

Births 2300 1200 900

Expenses 125000 130000 80000

Personnel 2000 1875 1200

From the table, Middleville hospital lags behind in the total number of admission it admits despite having a larger bed capacity as compared to its competitor Brierfield would recommend to the HCO that they do marketing and awareness of the hospital to the community this would consequently increase the number of patients that the hospital admits.

A larger turnout of the number of admissions will make the hospital serve a larger portion of the community and consequently improve their welfare.

Use of technology

If one thing is for sure modern information technology is changing the word, and it is crucial that Middleville hospital embraces the changes otherwise the hospital will be left behind and lose out to its competitors, and one thing is guaranteed you cant resist change. Despite the high cost of setting up the technology systems, namely Electronic Medical Records, merits of incorporating technology in running the hospital notably in handling data are enormous and by far outweigh the installment cost.

Technology will make it extremely easy to handle data in the hospital, the traditional filing systems are cumbersome and it's extremely hard to retrieve and manage patients information. With the introduction of electronic medical record, doctors can easily follow up a patients medical record accurately and at ease as compared to the manual system.

is more efficient and reliable in keeping medical records furthermore they dont grow old, disappear or get interfered with. Electronic records can be backed up in cloud services from where they can be accessed even when a disaster happens to strike the hospital facility.

Biometric systems when installed will reliably and efficiently help the management of hospital employees, the human resource manager will be able to account for all employees in the hospital whenever they desire(Bates,2000)

Technology will also ease the communication in the hospital, communications among the staff and departmental heads will be more efficient and this will pace up the flow of activities in the hospital, there will be less time that is waited in between activities as instructions are instantly delivered to their recipients.

Performance of employees

With the budget constraint of the hospital, it might not be possible to renew the salaries of the employees upwards, although money is the most acceptable form of remuneration the hospital should identify other ways of motivating the employees.

A motivated employee will by far outperform a non-motivated employee, motivation does not have to be in monetary terms the board should devise other methods to motivate the employees and in this way boosting the morale of the employees(Garg, 2006)).

This method may include giving gifts to all employees, giving them holidays, team building exercises,

The most common reason behind underperformance in employees is boredom, with time employees, get bored of the same old routine at the workplace. It is prudent to shuffle employees and their workplaces to ensure that no employee stays at the same position for too long.

Also, the management should be flexible in giving paid leaves to employees when an employee goes for leave they will come up more rejuvenated and perform better.

References

Bates, D. W. (2000). Using information technology to reduce rates of medication errors in hospitals. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 320(7237), 788.

Schulz, R. R., & Johnson, A. C. (1976). Management of hospitals. McGraw-Hill Companies.

Garg, P., & Rastogi, R. (2006). New model of job design: motivating employees' performance. Journal of management Development, 25(6), 572-587.