Background Study
National Guard Health Affairs is an accredited healthcare centre that offers medical facility to Saudi Arabian people. The medical complex comprise of sophisticated medical cities that are located in various parts of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Abdul-Aziz Medical City is its largest medical city, which is located in Rayadh.
The hospital has almost all medical specialties and sub-specialties such as cardiac surgery, dental, oncology among other specialties. National Guard Health Affairs vision is its appraisal as a global acclaimed centre for excellence in promoting health care. Its mission entails providing high quality healthcare facility to Saudi Arabians, as well as other eligible patients.
In addition, National Guard Health Affairs provides education opportunity to its employees. Moreover, it engages in health related researches in order to provide solutions to various health related diseases. Moreover, National Guard Health Affairs participates in community and industrial health service programs that to enhance the health care of Saudi Arabian people (National Guard Health Affairs 2012).
National Guard Health Affairs Strategies
National Guard Health Affairs has adopted various strategies to enable it to become a recognized international centre for excellence in healthcare provision. The hospital has invested in highly competent human resource in order to ensure that the patient who visit the hospital receive high quality services.
The hospital has very educated and specialized physicians such as cardiac surgery specialties, oncology specialties, pediatrics specialties, as well as highly qualified and competent dentists. In order to augment the skills of its highly competent staffs, the hospital offers training facilities to non-physicians staffs.
The employees who receive supplementary trainings and development programs in the centre are mainly the technicians, paramedics, as well as administrative workers. Some of the courses that foreign employees get at National Guard Health Affairs are Arabic languages that are instrumental in facilitating communication with those who cannot comprehend other languages. In addition, Saudi Arabian employees receive English language to assist them in their communication processes.
National Guard Health Affairs has also noted that technology is essential for proper healthcare provision. In facilitating patients’ records and inter-departmental communication, the National Guard Health Affairs has implemented a total automated health information system. The IT infrastructure has greatly improved the tracking of patients’ records such as prescriptions and lab results, which has is associated in reducing medical errors considerably.
National Guard Health Affairs is one of the few healthcare facilities that have fully implemented Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and one of the leading clinical information system that comprise of centralized computerized patient records (National Guard Health Affairs 2012). The implementation of an efficient IT framework has greatly enabled the hospital to achieve paperless as well as filmless healthcare organization that is associated with high patient care and improved efficiency and effectiveness.
At the present, National Guard Health Affairs is adopting Enterprise Electronic Image Processing and Image Storage in all its Medical Imaging, Cardiac and Dental facilities as a strategy to enhance its technological development for high quality health care. Fully integration of filmless technology will assist in overcoming the environmental challenges that accompany film-screen system, film chemistry, as well as its disposal, which are associated with radiations emissions, which are harmful to our health (Croll 2008).
Apart from being highly effective in curative services, National Guard Health Affairs is committed in the collection and analysis of infection control data. The data collected is very essential in risk assessment as well as in putting appropriate prevention and control strategies to stop the spread of infectious diseases.
National Guard Health Affairs is committed in facilitating surveillance monitoring in order to control widespread of infectious illness. The centre also facilitates the education of patients, as well as their visitors about individual hygiene and community health initiatives as a measure to manage the spread of infectious diseases (Riyadh 2012).
Strength of National Guard Health Affairs Strategies
National Guard Health Affairs has very competent workforce that enables it to offer very high quality services to those patients who uses its facilities. The hospital recruits very competent workforce and provides training programs, which help in upgrading the skills and knowledge of its employees.
The competency of its workforce has greatly enabled the hospital to continue growing both in the number of patients, it serves, as well as in the efficiency and effectiveness of its services delivery. National Guard Health Affairs has a very intensive technology. The hospital has been equipped with the latest health technologies to facilitate effective and efficient delivery of health care. National Guard Health Affairs has adopted ERP systems that facilitate patient record tracking, interdepartmental communications, as well as diagnostic processes.
The hospital is in the process of upgrading its x-ray departments to adopt a more efficient and environmental friendly technology. The hospital is adopting Radiology Information System and Picture Archiving and Communication System technology that will do away with the traditional method of film screen system and replace it with filmless technologies that is more efficient and does not emit radiation particles.
Moreover, National Guard Health Affairs is renowned in its ability to engage in surveillance and monitoring activities that have helped the hospital to be very effective in the prevention and control of infectious diseases (Ahmad & Housen 2012).
Weakness of National Guard Health Affairs
Although National Guard Health Affairs has training facility for its non-physician staffs, the centre does not have a training facility for its physicians.
The absence of training facility for physicians in National Guard Health Affairs means that the hospital relies totally on physicians from outside whom the hospital them huge salaries in order attract and retain competent doctors. This means that the hospital spends a considerable amount of its revenue in paying its doctors (InfoNet 2012). Moreover, there is no enough well trained, local and qualified staff.
Opportunities of National Guard Health Affairs
Since National Guard Health Affairs has learning institution that it uses in training its non-physicians staffs, it should equip the institution with appropriate human as well as technological resources in order to use it in training physicians. The availability of the college is a good opportunity for the hospital, as it will not require investing a lot of money to upgrade the institution in order to be an accredited college that can offer medical courses up to graduate level.
By training medical doctors, National Guard Health Affairs will have enough supply of doctors and it will not use a lot of its revenue to source for doctors who it pays huge salaries (Afifi & Berner 2007). In addition, it offers its employees sponsorship to go to Canada and U.S.
Threats of National Guard Health Affairs
There are many emergent private hospitals in Saudi Arabia that competes stiffly with National Guard Health Affairs. Many investors have invested in private hospitals, as well as many Saudi Arabian doctors establishing their own clinics from where they attend their private patients.
There are new governmental medical cities with high-qualified staff that offers high quality services. In addition, the new medical cities and private hospitals offer their employees huge salaries, which brings high turnover of employees in the hospital to the government and private hospitals.
Political factors affecting National Guard Health Affairs
The Saudi Arabia government allocated 4 billion Riyals for ehealth programs. This fund greatly assisted National Guard Health Affairs to adopt a comprehensive information technology infrastructure (Acuff 2010). Moreover, NGHA should not accept non-eligible patients. Approximately 50% of NGHA patients are non-eligible in NGHA but because they are, Saudi and they need treatment they have letter of exception to have treatment in NGHA.
Economic Factors National Guard Health Affairs
Saudi Arabia is a country that has a very strong Gross Domestic Product. Over 80% of its budget comes from petroleum sector. The GDP of Saudi Arabia expanded from 5% to 6.8% in the year 2011. Saudi Arabia therefore, has a booming economy that has greatly facilitated the expansion of National Guard Health Affairs (Emoblis 2012).
Social Factors National Guard Health Affairs
Some of NGHA customers came from low socio economic class – illiterate because of this NGHA need to invest more budgets in health promotion (Hooper, Smith, Qahtani, Memish & Schlangen 2008).
Environmental Factors
The great fluctuation of weather in Saudi Arabia whereby during the day its very hot while at night very cold is associated with many bronchitis infections.
Legal
National Guard Health Affairs is instrumental in the Convention on the Right of the Child. National Guard Health Affairs is supporting the enacting of appropriate legislation that will help in controlling child abuse and negligence.
Technological Factors National Guard Health Affairs
Saudi Arabia health care has high technology. The National Guard Health Affairs has all its hospitals highly computerized. All processes in the hospital are computerized. The hospital has implemented ERP systems that are very effective and efficient in coordinating patients’ information. The information systems facilitate in diagnostic, tracking of patients information, as well as in communication processes (Tech Target 2009).
In order to optimize the strategy of NGHA, the researcher recommends for management of the hospital to increase the salaries of its employees in order to reduce the high turnover of its competent workforce to private and government hospitals. Moreover, the facility should start its own training college for training physicians.
Training of doctors will ensure that NGHA will always have enough supply of doctors. NGHA has some patients that are illiterate and come from poor background. Therefore, NGHA should extend its surveillance program and increase its education programs on teaching them about prevention methods.
This activity was importance as it enabled me to learn on how I can use business analysis tools such as SWOT and PESTLE analysis to assess the strategies adopted by an organization identify weakness and recommend appropriate solutions.
In conclusion: National Guard Health Affairs has established efficient and effective strategies that have support its superb performance. The facility has very competent workforce and the health facilities have been highly automated to facilitate efficient execution of tasks. However, National Guard Health Affairs will require starting a college for training doctors to avoid overlying on foreign physicians, as well as topping the salaries of its employees to stop losing them to government and private hospitals.
List of References
Acuff, K. 2010, Definition of Healthcare Policy. Web.
Afifi, M. & Berner, A. 2007, Research Policy in the Arab World: Lost in Translation. The Middle East Journal of Family Medicine, Vol.5, no. 6, pp. 148-196.
Ahmad, D. & Housen, M. 2012, A perspective on the Influence of Health Policy on Health Technology Use Within the Arab World, Journal of Health Informatics in Developing Countries, Vol. 6, no.1 pp.375-384.
Croll, P. 2008, Special Issue: Health Information Privacy and Security, Electronic Journal of Health Informatics, Vol.5, no.1, pp. 1446-436.
Emoblis, K. 2012, Saudi Arabia GDP Growth Rate. Web.
Hooper, T., Smith, T., Qahtani, M., Memish D., & Schlangen, K. 2008, Saudi Arabia-United States Collaboration in Health Research: A formula for Success. Web.
InfoNet 2012, PESTLE and SWOT Analysis. Web.
National Guard Health Affairs, 2012, Patient Services. Web.
National Guard Health Affairs, 2012, Training and Development. Web.
Tech Target 2009, What is Health Information Technology and Policy Briefing Book. Web.
Riyadh, 2012, Infection Control Practitioner. Web.