Virginia Mason Medical Center: Self-Managing Challenges and Problems - Essay Sample

Introduction

The experience observed in the Virginia Mason Medical Center case study is an everyday reality that organizations can usually internally manage their challenges and problems without seeking external assistance of involving foreign entities. When Dr. Keplan resumed the leadership of the organization in 2000, several trials, it was clear that the institution was in an ultimate mess. Occasional loss of funds and reduced morale of work by its employees' examples of such problems. However, the leader decided to take a survey on the Toyota production system, which is in Japan, to help them in improving the quality of care and patient safety. The idea was used to propose for the VMPS that guaranteed patients a priority (Bohmer & Ferlins, 2005). This study aims at discussing the implementation process in-depth, the associated challenges, the strategies and measures used to overcome these challenges, and finally, the overall advantages and disadvantages which emerged as a result of the VMPS installation.

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Challenges Faced When Implementing VMPS

They were implementing a new system within the organization perceived to be quite challenging and more problematic. The employees had to adjust accordingly, to support its implementation, despite the prior problems that had been faced by the organization. In reality, it obviously wouldn't be a straightforward process of Dr. Kaplan, who was also new in the medical centers. Therefore, their significant challenges that were faced during the system implementation includes;

First, Dr. Kaplan was challenged with the task of identifying the appropriate or rather the most relevant techniques for creating and building a substantial value in the marketplace of Virginia Mason Medical Center. Typically, he was new in the organization, and could perhaps be facing the challenge of getting to understand every worker's opinion and belief concerning the ongoing plans of implementing VMPS. Realistically, adhering to every worker's idea, and the suggestion was not feasible.

As a result, the leader faced the challenge of selecting the best strategy to offer the most exceptional value in the marketplace, to achieve success in the MMMC. Moreover, building an effective leadership that provides market-leading offers can be one of the most duties, especially a supplicated environment like that of Virginia Mason medical center. In the reviewed case study, it is highlighted that, when Dr. Kaplan took over the leadership of VMMC, there was an existing challenge of loss of funds, and the institution was equally being overwhelmed by its competitors.

When these two problems of financial losses and instance of ardent competition fare integrated, it can easily be depicted that, building or rejuvenating the initial success rate of the company would be uneasy. As a result, picking a strategy to improve the quality of care, patient outcome, financial stability, and sustainable competitive advantage became the major challenge of Dr. Kaplan while engaging in the VMPS implementation.

The second challenge faced by Dr. Kaplan was that of waste. The waste problem persisted for a longer duration, hence consistently shifted the attention and also manipulated the suggested policies for implementing the VMPS. Besides, the challenge continued to impact the organization's financial plans for investment. Since there was a need for eliminating the wastes before the realization of success, the economic impact was so huge that the initial intentions by Dr. Kaplan had to fail. Moreover, it was almost impossible to completely eradicate the problem of wastes, because the average plan of 30-40 revenue expenditure bore no fruits. Analysts and scholars have previously acknowledged that it would take up to trillions of dollars to wholly address the challenge (Bohmer & Ferlins, 2005).

The underlying meaning and implication of this finding are that it was, and it is still impossible for the organization to free itself soon since the mess was massive. Nevertheless, the challenge only came after the TPS survey and the speculations that since TPS guidelines eliminated wastes, so would be the VMPS.

In the case study, the author states that Toyota Production System was efficient as it eliminated all the wastes that perceived to consume organizational resources but either had no critical value on the organization, in terms of success contribution. The case was different with MMMC since the extent of the wasted was comparatively large that it was anticipated.

For this reason, researchers have continued to blast the 30-40% funds offered to revert the situation, claiming that it is equal to a drop in the ocean, or instead adds no value. To mention but a few, the following are the most affected categories in the Virginia Mania healthcare: the administration, clinical decision-making team, over usage of the diagnostic tools, and various therapeutic interventions, inventories, and other health facilities.

Two Actions to Overcome the Challenges Incurred Including Setting up a New System

To address these challenges, two actions may be put forth to help the healthcare organization realize its goals faster and using fewer resources. The organization considered training its employees on the individual-based measures of reducing the wastes every day. From the case study, it was outlined that the TPS usually achieves its success despite the existence of waste challenges due to its ability to empower the workers with enough knowledge and skills of managing and responding to problems much faster before the effects are further dissipated within the entire organization.

In convention, it is vital to note that difficulties brought by the results of waste can only be robust if it is not addressed from its roots. With the state of Virginia medical center when Dr. Kaplan took over the leadership where the authors stipulate that team morale of work was generally diminished, the productivity was negatively influenced and concurrent willingness of the workers to adhere to the safety policies that aim at reducing the further accumulation of wastes also reduced.

Dr. Keplan, therefore, trained its workers with the new VMPS in use as a method of motivating them and, most importantly, encouraging them to adopt the individual waste management policies. This meant that the daily increment of wastes was cut off or controlled; thus, the organization's fund allocation of managing the wastes would now seem more beneficial and productive in the long run.

The second corrective action plan adopted by Virginia Mason medical care was considering the negligible areas which perceived to add no value as the most significant pillars or founding blocks of the VMPS model. Primarily, the previous leadership of the healthcare center had factored out specific issues to address. On most occasions, organizational strategies and plans don't include every single step and activity that should be done for the completion of the project, yet, they carry the backbone of the project in most scenarios since failure to address them leads to a dead-on-arrival proposal. As a result, Dr. Kaplan left no stone unturned by considering all the sectors and activities with similar scope and attention.

The author reiterated this point by stating, "As for the first six months of Kaplan's occupation, in efforts toward retrieval, the medical center pursued to unite less lucrative business lines and produce highly gainful lines" Bohmer & Ferlin's, 2005). Considerably, little areas could be transformed into the most significant opportunities and advantages. For example, Dr. Kaplan gave workers an environment of free will that enabled them to present their ideas and opinions on the various ways of making the system more efficient and productive (Kenney, 2012).

In the Toyota company, the author for the case study states that there was an average of 999,000 different ideas generated by employees on an annual basis, and about 90% got implemented in the TPS. A similar plan was an option by Dr. Kaplan as a way of barnstorming its employees and getting the best from them, to foster the market development and stability process (Bohmer & Ferlins, 2005).

The Value Proposition Guiding the Decision to Implement VMPS

The primary value of any organizational leader, even in the exception of Seattle's case, should be to be a quality figure amongst the entire team and be able to drive the goals and objectives in the right direction that they aspire to be. Moreover, it is essential to focus on the transformation of healthcare from its original state to a rejuvenated figure, which can boast of employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction with the excellent quality outcomes, a profound, sustainable competitive market among other ambitions (Kenney, 2012). The VMPS has proved to work towards the direction of these variables, given its proposed plan to offer patients with the priority above anyone else within the healthcare setup.

What this initiative dictates is that patient's experiences would at Virginia Mason healthcare be addressed with the utmost level of attention to ensure that a positive patient outcome is obtained, and also to form a stable relationship between the health workers and employees. The strives of healthcare to improve the patient experience was, however, deprived significantly by the act if building several non-essential facilities and owning the most dominant market share.

Two Ways by Which the Effort Added Value to Patient Services

First, with an integrated VMPS system, patients were no longer expected to wait either in the healthcare's emergency rooms or via the phones, whenever they needed health services. For instance, Virginia Mason installed the patient safety efforts by forming a fact patient's response organ known as the medical emergency team (MET), to promote real-time delivery of health services without further delay (Bohmer, & Ferlins, 2005). Second, the patients were also able to obtain everything they needed for their safety and positive outcome, rather than giving them only what they needed.

For example, VMMC in the year 2004, adopted the use of bundles in their treatment room, to ensure that patients were safe against the risks of contracting other diseases in the process of seeking medication of another illness (Bohmer & Ferlins, 2005). Using bundles helped the organization to protect their patients against acquiring ventilator-acquired pneumonia, infection of the surgical sites, central line infections, and also advanced the overall myocardial infarction care (Pham et al., 2007). Therefore, patients were protecting in all-round, and not only in the cases that they presented as it was before.

Unintended Consequence of The VMPS Effort

The effort led to various unintended consequences, although only a few would be discussed in this essay. In every unintended consequence, there was either a negative or positive impact in correspondence. They include: (1) high focus on flexibility- the VMPS encouraged much emphasis on flexibility of the resources and workers regarding their ability to rapidly transform to the new system (Kenney, 2012). This led to positive impacts such as improved patient care; (2) the system gave less consideration on the cost issues.

He proposed that aspects of costs be combined with other human tragedies and cases of wastes to provide room for prioritizing the medical errors which took place in the VMMC. Because he believed that the organization had suffered severely from financial losses, he earned much focus to regain back the market trust and confidence by offering exemplary quality health care. Indirectly, the organization would, later on, make financial steps in a more relaxed manner.

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