Introduction
The proposed plan will depend upon a series of factors for its success. The private or public status of a hospital might come into play. Resource constraints may be a significant problem. Additionally, issues pertaining to staff and administrative attitudes/ skills may impede the success of this plan.
Barriers and pitfalls
The most obvious barrier to the success of this plan is poor financing. If a hospital is a private institution, it will require approval from financial officers before implementation of the plans. One must make a business case for improvement of hospital operations management to these administrators. The main challenge for overseers of such plans is making hospital financiers look beyond obvious financial ramifications. For instance, some of the strategies suggested will eliminate unnecessary use of tests, surgical procedures or other hospital services. This may lead to diminished income for the company (Rosenthal 353).
Alternatively, if the concerned institution is a public hospital, then the financial problem becomes even more restrictive. Most public hospitals must treat whoever walks into their doors. Sometimes, these patients may not have medical cover or the ability to pay. Therefore, public hospitals take on an additional risk that is not prevalent in private hospitals. In fact, this explains why their profit margins are often quite low. It will be difficult to finance a quality plan for hospital operations when resources are inadequate.
The other serious obstacle is staff support. Many individuals may not fully support the plan if they do not see the need for quality improvement. This means that the entire process may drag on for a longer period than anticipated. If a hospital is quite busy, then the operations management improvement plan will seem like a distraction from their core activities. Therefore, time constraints may be an issue here. Alternatively, if the senior leadership appears to downplay the plan, then the rest of the staff members may follow suit.
Staff members may suffer from quality improvement fatigue. If they had already carried out another plan to boost their quality of care, then they may not understand the usefulness of an operations mismanagement improvement plan. On the other hand, if no quality improvements have ever been done, employees may not have enough confidence in themselves to carry out the changes.
Poor team leadership and team organization may also hamper project success. It may be difficult to select the right panel to identify the key obstacles in the hospital operations system. Consequently, everything else will fail because the team will identify few or wrong areas for quality improvement. Alternatively, the team may lack skills needed to improve operations mismanagement. Other structural and reporting issues may also impede its success.
Factors that may influence those barriers and pitfalls
For financial problems in private hospitals, a factor that may alter this barrier is the education of financial administrators about the cost savings that may result from the plan. In public hospitals, employees can start with aspects of the plan that require minimal incentives. With regard to staff support, the team leader will need to use evidence from other institutions to convince employees that they need the plan. One factor that can affect the team leadership issues is investing in the training of team members (Saturno 120). Conversely, a hospital can lay out all the expectations in the hospital operations improvement plan in order to prevent confusion about the process and its expectations.
Works Cited
Rosenthal, Guy. “Using hospital performance data in quality improvement: The Cleveland health quality choice experience.” Joint Committee Quality Improvement Journal 24.3(1998): 347-360. Print.
Saturno, Patrick. “Training health professionals to implement quality improvement activities.” International Journal of Quality Heath care 7.5 (1995): 119-126. Print.