Prairie St. John’s Hospital’s Administration Coursework

Introduction

One of the most essential aspects that dictate effective business operations and administrative development capacity in an organization is the kind of leadership assimilated by organizational leaders (Chassin et al., 2010). It is the leadership of an organization that determines how well strategies, goals, objectives and visions are formulated and assimilated in order to achieve high profitability. Taking into consideration the complexity of management in the highly globalized world and changing trends, this paper explores human resource operations and administration at Prairie St. Johns Hospital in an interview with Michelle Parkinson who is the Director of Human Resources.

An overview of business operations at Prairie St. Johns Hospital

Prairie St. John’s LLC is a psychiatric hospital based in Fargo, North Dakota (Prairie St. Johns, 2010). The hospital was formed in 1996 and has since been able to expand its locations to Moorhead, Minnesota and Woodbury. It offers variety of clinical services for adults, children and adolescents. Some of those services include mental health services, telemedicine, psychiatry consultation, treatment and inpatient hospitalization. The leadership in this hospital has aligned its resources towards its mission of offering healing and hope to individuals and patients with addiction problems and diverse psychiatric conditions.

Human resource leadership and operations at Prairie St. John’s LLC

The department and profession that plays one of the most important roles at Prairie St. John’s LLC is the Human Resource Department because it deals with workers, appraisal and strategic focus. This determines the overall productivity and profitability in the institution. Human resources departments are very crucial in linking an organization with its visions because it is workers and employees who define the application of respective organization policies.

The Director of Human Resources at Prairie St. John’s LLC is Michelle Parkinson. She holds a Bachelor’s in business and healthcare administration from the University of Minnesota State. Besides, she is a well-known senior professional (SPHR) with over 16 years of experience in human resources. Mitchell’s experience as a leader in this field was developed during the initial 8 years that she worked in different nursing homes, physician clinics and acute care hospitals in Nevada.

Her work at the Prairie St. John’s LLC started in 2010 where she was charged with the roles of providing responsible leadership in the human resources department.

The interview

Questions used during the interview

1. What are the most crucial functions of an HR? Why are they crucial and how do they relate to your organization’s productivity?
2. As an HR leader, what tasks demand most of your time and skills?
3. What are some of the challenges affecting your administration at the macro and micro level, and how do you address them?

Answer to the most crucial functions of HR and their relations to productivity

In regards to the recruitment of employees in organizations, Parkinson noted that recruitment of workers in an organization was one of the most critical functions that HR managers face in their organizations. She argued that recruitment is the only way that an organization can start to move either in production of implementation of its policies. Indeed, her argument concurs with those of scholars like Valdmanis, Rosko and Mutter (2008) who point out that recruitment is very critical in any HR because it enables the determination and selection of workers needed in any organization.

It was clear from the interview that there is no particular perfect method of recruitment. However, Parkinson indicated that a human resource leader should adhere to respective institutions’ objectives and missions. Besides, she posited that organizations should not consider the recruitment process to end after identification of workers.

Answers to tasks that demand most from you

As Parkinson narrated about the work and methods that she employs in order to achieve the departments’ objective, one aspect was outstanding both in terms of ideology and preference. Training occupied most of her time because health service provision and addressing health needs is all about preparedness and correct decision making. Healthcare service provision and other related service units are often gauged by the public on the basis of success they achieve in addressing emergent health issues (Shen & Eggleston, 2009). Achieving this success can therefore be possible only through adequate training and creating mock scenarios that generate confidence and accuracy among workers.

Answer to macro and micro challenges

Parkinson indicated that several issues affect HR management. Some of the major challenges include the micro and macro business issues in the healthcare industry. Others include the globally distributed works, organizational factors and cross cultural issues. She adds that these factors affect both individual and organizational productivity. This is because of their effect on an organizations’ workforce. Most health providers go for the global market when outsourcing so that they can manage the shortage of medical workers.

Table illustrating similarities and differences trends between research and interview conducted.

Data collection

Primary data was very essential because it assisted the researcher to get the direct factual information in the application of the policies and practices related to HR practices. Therefore, the interview was used alongside structured questions asked at the different levels of HRD implications. Use of interview was a major option for enhancing better capacity to quantify the respondent’s responses on the different policy aspects.

Besides, it is important to note that secondary information serves and research are necessary backups in enhancing the viability of the results. By reviewing the major literature that exists, it was easy to prevent repeat in what has actually been done and therefore project the research to the respective institution and the general public. In this study, the secondary data did set the operation insight of Prairie St. John’s LLC in relation to its major applications of the different policies both internally and externally.

Trends and challenges to future HR managers

Management technology

Management technology is an emerging trend that encompasses a set of disciplines that offers HR managers with technological fundamentals critical for creating technology project portfolio, technology roadmap for understanding market needs, technology scouting or forecasting and technology strategy. These are necessary in HR management and building a competitive edge.

Impacts

1. It adds value to HR administration by improving management via technology rather than relying fully on human administration.
2. Management technology augments services offered, processes and products.
3. It integrates control, operations, design and planning through effective operations management and enhances statistics, quality control on health and safety issues.

Globalization

In their article, Shortell and Kaluzny (2006) cite emerging trends in globalization to be the major threat for HR managers. Emerging technologies in the provision of healthcare services and especially mental health requires HR managers to continuously change their systems so as to fit the required technology.

Impacts

1. Globalization enhances competition, a factor that influences many leaders in organizations to heighten performance expectations, cost and quality of products and service provision. This may impact positively or negatively on employees, work and customer satisfaction
2. Globalization has led to the influx in the number of expatriates, work perspectives, languages and cultural mix which is favorable for management.
3. Human resource management has gone through massive pressure to adapt to changes in globalization by re-organizing policies and needs of the organization in order to improve service provision.

Conclusion

Human resources development roles and application demand as noted in the discussion above are highly complex and therefore demand a similarly complex outlook in application in the selection and staff maintenance and handling emergent trends. By adopting a highly rated system of hiring and monitoring workers, and based on both pedagogic approaches and experience, it becomes much easier for the hospital to apply modern technological demands for higher profitability.

References

Chassin, M., Loeb, J. Schmaltz, S. & Wachter, R. (2010). Accountability measures – Using measurement to promote quality improvement. The New England Journal of Medicine, 363(7), 683-685.

Prairie St. John (2013). Michelle Parkinson, Director of Human Resources. Web.

Shen, Y. & Eggleston, K. (2009). The effect of soft budget constraints on access and quality in hospital care. International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics 9(2), 211-233.

Shortell, S. M. & Kaluzny, A. D. (2006). Health Care Management: Organizational Design and Behavior (5^th ed.). Clifton, NY: Delmar.

Valdmanis, V., Rosko, M., & Mutter, R. (2008). Hospital quality, efficiency, and input slack differentials. Health Services Research 43(5), 1830-1848.