Introduction
Many organizations face numerous administration challenges in their management and operations to meet the customer’s needs. For any organization to effectively function and achieve its goals, it must eradicate the various barriers to effective production. An organization’s service delivery and productivity depend on several factors including the organization’s structure, time management, communications, equipment or instruments in use, as well as flexibility and adaptability to change. Being aware of the world’s dynamic activities that are taking place in the various organizations or institutions for a competitive purpose, it is crucial to understand the important strategies of introducing new processes and programs to an organization as part of ensuring its competitiveness in the market within the industry of its operations. The case of Academic Medical Hospital (AMH) gives a clear illustration on introducing and managing a change in an organization for improved service delivery and production within the managerial level.
Summary
While going through the presented Academic Medical Hospital’s information was revealed that the organization was a reputable one in the community, it was blemished by its internally generated turmoil and other problems. The organization had adopted and operated using crooked processes that were time-consuming or wasting. In addition, the processes were not only time consuming and frustrating for the management of the staffs, but they were also complex in the use of room management. With time delay as a major problem within the organization, this became one of the issues of concern to one of the staffs, who for almost a decade has ever struggled to look for, and as well the introduction of new programs anticipated as having the potential to solve the problem of procrastination, but all ending vainly.
Despite the need to streamline the emergency care processes within the organization through time-saving factor in their emergency department’s offices, many of the staffs were adamant about accepting the idea of introducing new programs, thus declining to reward the efforts of their colleague by holding on to their endowed experience and organization routines for high-quality services in the emergency department. Even though the emergency departmental staff declined to accept and adapt the first improvement programs, they were viewed to lack a basic foundation and future improvement. The Academic medical Hospital staff members, therefore, continued to utilize the same kind of techniques in their service delivery till the year 2000, when a new program for processes improvement known as Six Sigma (with statistical and change management unique features) became known to the process improvement steering personnel. Precisely, the Six Sigma program marked a new era in the organization that was reflective of the enormous transitional changes that followed such an innovative program for improved service delivery.
Background
In the Academic Medical Hospital, the value for high-quality treatment processes was an intrinsic element, but with just a few of the members willing to change from their antiquity practices to meet the needs of the department as required. The improvement process program that was being sought for was not meant for the improvement of the clients’ services, but these were also crucial in the mitigation of the Hospital capacity load, the volume of queues, or overcrowding of the patients in the serving bay (Fitzsimmons, 2010). In all medical operations, it is recognized that saving human life and/or reduction of human pain is important for the person attending treatment. The introduction of any programs in the medical industry service to expedite processes is viewed as a way of saving human life or reducing pain, thus lying by clinical and nursing principles and code of conduct. Furthermore, having procrastination in any form within the emergency department is quite detrimental, as this is the department that handles lives at a very sensitive state in need of quick rescue. Based on the perspective of life, it’s upon the efforts of medical service providers in this section to act hastily to improve the patient’s health situation of saving the life of the person. Though it is human nature to have mercy on those who are suffering, delaying to offer first aid or medical services to patients is contemplated as a breach of law under the medical code of ethics and the principle of conduct (Sprague, 2008).
Managing time in the processes of offering services not only mitigates the kind of service extended to the client but also ensures the satisfaction of the service recipient, while at the same time making the provider become encouragement of the work satisfaction. Finally, it should be pointed out that time management is important for furthering the knowledge on a particular field and therefore the introduction of new programs need time for them to be adopted. The introduction of new programs or projects in an organization is the only way of maintaining the personnel well equipped with the necessary knowledge and skill to deliver within the organization and in their areas of operations. Lack of improvement program in an organization would thus make the personnel lag behind, and consequently keeping on applying obsolete techniques and skills in their operation, which implies that flexibility and adaptability are essential for personnel of an organization to keep the right standards of service delivery (Gamble, 2009).
Problem statement
Quality assurance and change of service delivery require the adoption of the right improvement program that meets both the needs of the organization’s process and the users’ adaptability process.
Analysis
Impediments to Quality Assurance and change
Programs
The academic medical hospital had wanted to ensure that it delivered quality medical services to the customer for a long time. With all their endeavor to do so, the organization’s program that was reviewed failed to meet the standards that could ensure better quality services than the ones that were initially being used. The steering program research brought in programs to the organization that had no factual foundations and therefore was unable to convince the members of the organization of the improvement the programs were to bring in the organization. To change the organization’s processes on time-saving, Dr. Elbridge had to discover a program that had a source or foundation such as Six Sigma.
Availability of Required program
According to the information revealed for the AMH, though there was someone in the organization who aware of the need for the improvement program, the persons sought for different programs to be adopted, however, these failed to be adopted as they lacked the right characteristic or drivers to be entrenched by the organization.
Personal Knowledge and Experience
The employees working in the AMH continued to apply the same kind of techniques in their operation while still thinking that they were offering quality services. This only depended on their knowledge and experience as they had not adopted any programs that would make them get updated on the newly introduced skills or techniques in the market.
Organization Structure
In the AMH, the organization of the managerial structure appeared to been too much diffused such there was a combination of leading managerial teams were to participate in the overall processes of introducing the program within the AMH and its associated School.
Ways of accelerating quality assurance and change.
Right program
The AMH quality and change foreseers had to find the right program. Not until when they established the correct program, that is the Six Sigma that they were able to make a progress in bringing in a change in the organization quality of service-based of speedy or time-saving factor. The two basic features of a good program for this purpose is its foundation and the anticipated future improvement possibilities; and without the duel, the program should be considered as non-implementable.
The right selection of the Participants
The AMH quality assurance personnel and change initiator had to conduct the right persons mainly executives and those in administrative positions to discuss and support the introduction of the program in the organization.
Training
After the identifications of the right program and the completion of seminar training, the steering team for the quality assurance and change process managed to gather organization and medical school staff for training, where the few participated in the seminar acting as the trainers.
Implementation of Six Sigma
It includes;
- Forming a leadership to steer the process
- Drawing objectives by the committee
- Understanding the six sigma roles and assigning individuals to the various role responsibility
- Application of the Six Sigma Dmaic methodology
- Reviewing the Discussed issues/ activities and evaluating for improvement
Recommendation
- After going through the organization revealed information, I would like to make the following recommendations that can be used for the improvement of the organization’s quality of service delivery and change adaptation:
- Rather than leaving the task to an individual, the organization should consider forming a group of individuals to specialize in the research for process improvement within the organization.
- The organization should ensure there a mechanism for continuous training on the newly established methods for the professional leadership team.
- The organization should also consider the installation of modern systems to reduce much usage of the manual work within the organization
References
Fitzsimmons, J. (2010). Service Management Operations, strategy, information technology. McGraw Hill Higher Education.
Gamble, J. (2009). Crafting & Executing Strategy: McGraw-Hill.
Sprague, R. (2008).Information Systems Management: Prentice Hall.