The Organization
This paper details the impact of external forces of technology and competition acting on “St. Joseph’s Hospital, a Catholic health facility. This facility is a not-for-profit organization formed voluntarily as a community general hospital in the region of Elmira, NY. The hospital serves both inpatients and outpatients as a primary care and specialty referral center. The hospital works in collaboration with other healthcare providers and agencies to meet the health needs of the people of the region (St.Joseph’s).
External force A: Technology
With a view to reduce the operating cost by automating some of its functions, the hospital adopted mobile technology. With the assistance of the consultants, InfoLogix the hospital implemented redesigning of mobile network design, technology installation, end-user training, and ongoing support and maintenance. This step was needed to ensure that the technicians spend more quality time with the patients. A fully integrated MEDITECH Wireless Phlebotomy System was installed to perform functions like confirming patient IDs, performing specimen collection and labeling, store critical data. The purpose of this system is to automate the collection of blood samples and specimens from the patients, which was a time consuming manual process.
This enabled the hospital to manage their workload, in a better way from the point-of-care. This innovative technology adopted by the hospital has increased its ability to decrease time and resource requirements significantly for the hospital and the margin for error has shown a sharp decline. The technological initiative was an important aspect in the direction of improving the quality of patient-care and was considered mainly to improve overall patient experience. With this technology initiative, St. Joseph’s is now able to enjoy a streamlined, technology-enabled process that reduces the stress on the hospital staff and improves the satisfaction level of the patients (Campbell).
External force B: Competition
As a measure to combat the competition St. Joseph’s hospital entered in to an agreement with Arnot Ogden Medical Center situated in the same region, for an affiliation of the two facilities on the recommendations of the Commission of Healthcare Facilities (known as Berger Commission). Both the facilities at the instance of the Commission participated in a discussion supervised by the Commission to explore the possibilities for the affiliation of both the facilities.
The aim of this affiliation was to end the medical race in the region and for expending resources on duplicative services. An agreement was reached to enhance primary care services for Medicaid patients at both the hospitals and to establish standardized best practices to be followed in the respective hospitals. This agreement met with the definition of affiliation as per the report of the Commission. This initiative can be considered as the initiative taken from St. Josephs to contain the competition from Arnot Ogden providing identical services to the patients of the region. With the agreement, the hospital has ensured that it has eliminated the potential competition from one of the major rival in the same field.
The Commission had the authority to close down one of the hospitals, and expand the other had the hospitals refused to take part in the discussions on the affiliation initiated by the Commission. Now St. Josephs is looking for more areas of collaboration with Arnot Ogden to improve its working. Because of this initiative, St. Josephs could eliminate the competition and enhance the primary care services at its facility (Department of Health).
Works Cited
Campbell, Susan. St. Joseph’s Hospital Turns to InfoLogix for Mobile Technology and Wireless Phlebotomy. 2008. Web.
DepartmentofHealth. Arnot Ogden, St. Joseph’s Hospital Agree to Enhance Medicaid Primary Care Services at Their Facilities. 2007. Web.
St.Joseph’s. Website of St; Josephs. 2009. Web.