Community Health Center
Definition: An establishment where medical services are offered with the aim of improving the health of the community.
Differences Between Community Health Centers and Public Health Departments
- Community health centers offer clinical services to patients (Alix, 1993).
- Public health departments are mainly concerned with the administration of health care facilities within a locality. They offer certificates and licenses to practitioners as well as collecting statistical data on the operations of health care facilities (Paine, 1978 ).
- Community health centers mostly depend on the services of trained medical personnel like doctors and nurses (Alix, 1993).
- Public health departments depend on the services of individuals trained in administration fields like accountants (Paine, 1978 ).
- Community health centers offer services that directly affect the public.
- Public health departments ensure that health centers are run properly but its officials do not directly interact with members of the public (Paine, 1978 ).
Does C.W. Williams Need an Affiliate Hospital
Definitely, C.W. Williams like any other community health center does need an affiliate hospital.
Reasons Why C.W. Williams Needs an Affiliate Hospital
Because of the constrained resources that the center gets in terms of finances, it is very hard for the management to acquire specialized equipment some of which can run up to millions in terms of cost. The center can therefore channel monies obtained to take care of the salaries of the health care providers and refer patients who require specialized attention to the affiliate hospital.
A hospital has the potential to hire doctors specializing in different diseases. Community health centers on the other hand mostly depend on the services of general practitioners who cannot have in-depth knowledge of all the ailments that are presented to them. An affiliate hospital will therefore come in handy as various cases that cannot be handled by the practitioner at the heath center can be referred to the specialists.
In some cases, for instance when an epidemic strikes, the health center may not be in a position to effectively address the problem. An affiliate hospital will therefore come in handy in taking off the extra load.
If the center needs to organize a community sensitization drive, it will most likely need the assistance and contribution of practitioners from other hospitals. An affiliate hospital will be even more convenient because chances are that it may share in the vision and mission of the health center.
Importance of Leadership in Strategic Management
Leadership is a key component of strategic management. For any institution to run properly, the leaders of the various departments must work in tandem with their counterparts from other areas. It is common knowledge that the character of junior staff at the work place is heavily influenced by the conduct of those in authority. Therefore, leaders must know to conduct themselves in a certain way if objectives are to be met (Vico, 1993)
From the above case it has been revealed that the people who were selected as board members did not have enough experience as pertains to strategic management. The leader, Ms. Mars however managed to fashion them with the information that strategic management requires all teams to work together; this however was received with a lot of disgruntlement.
Solutions to the Problem of Board Member Involvement
For some of the non-conforming members to the principles of strategic management, I might have to use the powers bestowed upon me as the chief executive officer to replace them with individuals who are willing to embrace the concepts
I would also lead by example by ensuring that I put into practice the principles of strategic management that I subscribe to. This will give other junior members of the board the motivation to act accordingly and more-so if the returns are positive.
Current State of U.S. Health Care Delivery
U.S health care delivery is currently on a downward trend majorly due to the radical changes happening both politically and economically.
The U.S. health care system was ranked 37th in the world1 by the World Health Report 2000 — This has been discussed on several occasions during the current debate on health care reform in the U.S.
The challenges Ms. Mars faces clearly reflect the inability of the government to take care of the health issues of its people.
Health care has been commercialized to the extent that poor people cannot afford it. This is shown from the case by the way in which the people are afraid of C.W. Williams being taken over by the affiliate hospital.
The issue of lack of funds to purchase specialized equipment is a general reflection of the bad economic state in the country. Facilities that deal directly with the poor masses are not taken into consideration when allocating resources and they have to operate with what they can afford.
Lessons Learnt From Book Review
- Taking ownership and charge of personal and organizational development.
- Utilization of and development of available talents in order to obtain the maximum potential of the institution.
- Getting ways of dealing with things that can derail the implementation strategies.
- Being aware of business and social acumens.
- Seeing the big picture of the organization before drafting any strategies.
- Seeking the opinions of relevant parties both in terms of feedback and suggestion.
- From the book, The Shark and the Goldfish, the main lessons learnt are mainly of change in personal thinking.
- These include:
- Accepting that change is inevitable and being ready to deal with it when necessary;
- Using change as a thriving factor instead of letting it bog you and your institution down.
Relevance of Book Review to This Case
- The books reviewed clearly provide ways of handling situations such as the issues facing C.W Williams.
- Ms Mars embraces the inevitability of change especially when doctors from the affiliate hospital are barred from working at the health care facility.
- She uses whatever little resources that are available to ensure that the institution keeps running.
- As the CEO, Ms Mars sufficiently takes charge of the organization’s development especially when she addresses the issue of board members not availing themselves for meetings. She is challenged by great opposition from the other members of the board but she sticks to her strategy.
Thesis of the Film Invictus
- The film Invictus mainly deals with the issue of social change and shift in opinion. (Neufeld, 2009).
- Mandela leaves prison to become president. In most cases, he should have been the least preferred candidate based on the fact that he has been criminally charged before.
- However, the people embrace him because of the cause he was fighting for that brought about equality of the races in the country.
- The president taking time to offer coaching services to the national rugby team is equally strange. This however seeks to show that state officials need not detach themselves from issues that average people involve themselves in; actually by this interaction with the people through events like sporting activities greatly raise the credibility of the leaders (Neufeld, 2009).
Chaos and Complexity Theory
- The chaos theory proposes that one small and seemingly insignificant event causes a larger effect in the long run.
- The complexity theory proposes that each and every event happening around the world is linked to all other events.
Invictus-Chaos and Complexity Theory
- From the film Invictus both the complexity and chaos theories have been subtly included in the main theme.
- Mandela’s involvement with the team is equally reciprocated by the players who interact with the local people without worrying about social status. Therefore, Mandela’s role in the team is related to the team’s involvement with the people.
- From the film, the interaction of players with each other has a direct impact on the relations of members of the public especially those from different races.
- The positive way in which the players respond to Chester William‘s injury results in all members of the public agreeing to work alongside each other.
Strengths of the Main Characters
- Mandela’s other strength is that he has a never-give-up spirit. Even when he collapses out of fatigue, he still shows up to the match in a springboks jacket.
- Pienaar is equally a hard worker. He puts his teammates through hours of rigorous training to ensure that they perform desirably in the world cup.
Challenges of the Main Characters
- The main challenge facing both Mandela and Pienaar is the hardliner positions of members of both their races.
- They have to convince people to work harmoniously irrespective of their differences.
- Eventually, Pienaar succeeds in convincing his teammates to join him on an outreach programme to the inner city.
- Mandela’s quest of ending the evils of apartheid is to some extent a success because eventually a packed stadium of people from all races cheers on the national team.
Lessons on Strategic Thinking
- Both Mandela and Pienaar clearly define the principles of strategic thinking by coming up with goals and charting out ways of achieving them.
- Mandela seeks to preach the message of forgiveness by not revenging against the people that sent him to jail.
- To achieve this, he interacts with people of all races and deters anyone from changing the name of the national team.
- Pienaar shares in the vision of Mandela. He plans to use his teammates to preach the message of unity. In essence, intends to propagate the concept of leading from the front.
Take-Aways Related to the Book Review
Leading from the front-whenever a person wants to call for change in the way that things are done, he should make an effort of trying to change his ways first so that he can serve as an example to the people he is trying to influence.(Charan,2008).
Staying put even under the toughest of challenges has also been highlighted in the film. Both Mandela and Pienaar did not bulge when their mission was met with resistance and it is only by sticking to their mission that they managed to come out on top. (Gordon, 2009).
Taking charge of all the social responsibilities that have been delegated to an individual has also been emphasized. The impact of any action will almost always depend on whether the person who initiated it took appropriate responsibility.
Reference List
Alix, J.P. (1993). Community health center: Problems of definition and implementation. Sage journals online.
Charan, R. (2008). Leaders at all levels: Deepening your talent pool to solve the succession crisis. California: Jossey-Bass
Gordon J. (2009). The Shark and The Goldfish: Positive ways to thrive during waves of change. Hoboken, New Jersey.
Neufeld, M. Eastwood, C. (Director). (2009). Invictus. United States.
Paine, L. (1978). Health care in big cities. Taylor and Francis.
Stephensen, H. (2009). First Look: Clint Eastwood’s The Human Factor with Matt Damon. Slash Film. Web.
Vico, G. (2001). New science: Principles of the new science concerning the common nature of notions. London. Penguin Books.