Improvement of management is carried out through organizational changes. The development of an organization is a constant, purposeful change in the direction and functioning of the organization. New organizational structures, methods for developing management decisions, changes in the system of labor incentives – all of these are activities to update management in the organization. Orlando Health in Central Florida is a prime example of how organizational change within a healthcare organization can have a positive impact on improving efficiency levels. It is a private non-profit organization that operates 8 public and specialized hospitals with over 1800 beds. Orlando Health, due to the pandemic and the increased demand for the services of medical staff, has struggled with capacity restrictions and reduced office workload. The executive team was tasked with reducing the follow-up rate by streamlining the patient’s status determination process and improving the patient’s chances of recovery.
Effective management of patients under observation is essential to ensure the profitability of the healthcare system and maintain patient satisfaction. Optimizing the length of stay among patients under observation allows the healthcare system to free up resources to treat patients with more acute conditions. However, these benefits will remain elusive unless an organization has a clear strategy and approach to address inefficiencies in surveillance. Orlando Health has developed, launched, and further expanded telemedicine to improve the management of the observed patient population in each of its hospitals to improve patient care.
This method saves the patient’s time through online consultations with narrow specialists. It reduces people’s contact with each other and the formation of queues. Now visitors to the Orlando Health Medical Services Center can remotely contact the doctor after the initial examination and examination without returning to the clinic (Virtual visit). The consultation takes place over a secure channel, so you can safely send your test or examination results to the doctor.
Before implementing telemedicine in its hospitals, Orlando Health looked at the healthcare IT system from vendor Andor Health, which it intends to roll out to other levels in the future. Today, this is not limited to consultations regarding COVID-19 and allows having an appointment with your doctor regarding different issues. The system provides automated two-way communication and consultation between the inpatient care team and the attending physician, regardless of their certified status with patients (Siwicki, 2020). Typically, primary care physicians spend approximately two hours on administrative tasks and regulatory compliance for every hour spent on direct patient care, which, according to the study, contributes to high levels of burnout.
The introduction of telemedicine creates two-way communication between the on-call team and the attending physician in the state or out of it. This will eliminate all manual research into provider information and fit naturally into their clinical workflow. The medical staff’s satisfaction level increases without overloading physicians with warnings or performing administrative tasks beyond direct patient care (Manzoor et al., 2019). The organization’s management could improve the process of introducing change if it were carried out more gradually. According to the site, verification, testing and implementation of innovation were carried out simultaneously, which could cause stress for both employees and customers. However, the implementation process is ongoing and can now be made more systematic, and management has ensured that the organization’s values ​​are reflected in the change process.
Each company has its characteristics and unique style of implementing changes. This issue is especially acute in large corporations since the risks and responsibilities of organizational change projects increase proportionally to the organization’s size (Mustafa et al., 2019). In this case, the business must develop a gradual plan considering all possible dangers. In addition, the implementation process begins with setting and evaluating goals and opportunities to achieve them.
Implementing organizational changes requires the creation of administrative, economic and socio-cultural conditions for this innovation. After all, it involves the interaction of departments and organizations, training and retraining employees, and planning and developing a motivation system. A correctly set and well-founded goal of introducing changes to the organization will avoid risks and make the implementation process acceptable for employees.
References
Manzoor, F., Wei, L., Hussain, A., Asif, M., & Shah, S. I. (2019). Patient satisfaction with health care services; an application of physician’s behavior as a moderator. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(18), 3318.
Mustafa, N., Nakov, L., & Islami, X. (2019). The impact of organizational changes on increasing smes competitiveness. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Siwicki, B. (2020). Orlando Health Implements Care Coordination Tech to comply with state law and more. Healthcare IT News. Web.
Virtual visit (telehealth) at Orlando Health. Orlando Health. (n.d.). Web.