Introduction
As a health care manager, the most important health care functions that a manager can play include: leading, organizing, planning, and controlling. This involves reporting to the Board members and briefing them about the progress in the organization in terms of potential profitability, costs, patient care, and any setbacks.
Planning
In planning, the health care manager is expected to set fundamental goals such as the number of patients served, services are given to the patients, developing coordination between the health care facility and the hospital to ensure that the hospital gets referrals from the available physicians and ensuring that sufficient staff is available in respect to the number of patients available. As a manager, one is also expected to set out a plan to ensure that time is used properly and financial coupled with bookkeeping staff are able to work with the health insurance companies such as Medicaid and Medicare in making patients payments. The manager is also expected to plan for emergencies particularly in the case of the sudden influx in in-home patients who might hire speech therapists temporarily.
Organizing
As a manager, one should also be able to counter one of the major challenges in health care service which is organizing services and staff. The managers should ensure that the in-home calls to be made are on schedule and in case of delays such as therapist or nurse absence, contingency plans are available to ensure that all patients are given quality care.
Leading
A manager should also take the role of a leader implying that he should be able to motivate and influence the employees towards attainment of the health care objectives. For a manager to be a good leader there is a need for him/her to be an effective communicator with subordinates so as to leave them motivated.
For instance, the health manager should hold form teams and hold regular meetings with employees or teams to discuss the organization issues and problems facing them such as economizing time, patients’ relations, taking care of emergencies, staff- staff relationship and patients’ relationship with physicians. The manager is also expected to lead by example and in order to do this, he is occasionally required to join the staff during their work session and help them.
Controlling
Controlling entails ensuring that the services given do not deviate from the expected standards by establishing the performance standards, carrying out a comparison of actual performance and standards, and coming up with corrective actions. To ensure that the performance standards do not deviate, the health manager should be able to take control. He or she should ensure that medical doctors, nursing supervisors, and administrative assistants are obligated to report to him any issue pertaining to health care services.
Conclusion
All the management factors draw up to job satisfaction and therefore, good leadership is the most important aspect in health care management. With good leadership, one is able to build strong teams which form the basis of any organization’s success. The teams which are under good leadership will be able to contact the physicians, local hospitals, and agencies in an attempt to make sure that their use health care the organization’s health care professional services, attend to emergencies in time, and offer the organizational support that the health care organization needs.
References
Brown, M. (2007).Health care management: strategy, structure, and process. New York: Aspen.
Rigolosi, E.L.M. (2005). Management and leadership in nursing and health care: an experiential approach. New York: Springer Publishing Company.