Productivity in Healthcare Organizations
Productivity can be defined as a measure of output from a process involved in production per unit of input. Productivity is essential in healthcare organizations to improve efficiency in these organizations. Since productivity deals with inputs to achieve the required outputs it can be viewed as a metric of engineering efficiency in the production process. Productivity in health care organizations has been improved by the use of new IT systems solutions such as clinical systems, Inventory management patient profiling, and tracking of patient care.
This enables improvement in the quality of services offered by healthcare organizations and enhances efficiency in the provision of these services. Labor productivity is the number of output units or services produced within a given time that can be improved to increase the overall productivity of the healthcare firm (Huber, 2010).
Productivity is essential in healthcare organizations due to the following reasons; Improves on quality of services offered in health organizations. Reduces cost of running the organization. More patients can be served in a short period. The use of its services conforms to the worldwide technological changes in structures of organizations. Labor productivity is of main importance in health care organizations as most of the activities are carried out by employees in health organizations. With the increased pressure of improvement in qualities of services offered in health organizations, most hospitals and health centers have resulted in growth in productivity; levels to match with the demand for better services.
With the improved services in health organizations people can now be assured of their health status as emergency cases can now be handled under utmost care and precision and with the required speed. Higher productivity thus should be embraced in all health organizations.
Areas requiring an increase in employee productivity
Labor is one of the factors of production and is essential for production, in some cases labor is the main factor of production especially in service-related industries. Increasing labor productivity means increasing output of a certain employee or adding value to an employee. Areas that largely require an increase in employee productivity include; Healthcare services, it is not that the number of doctors and nurses available to serve the health fraternity is demanding and thus more employees to train in this area.
Another area is IT technicians, due to the evolving world and emerging issues in business world it would be of importance that labor productivity is increased to deal with new technological advancements. Employee productivity should also be increased in the production of agricultural products, although modern inputs are generated towards the improvement of agricultural products, more employees should be channeled to enable higher productivity and ensure there is enough food supply in the economy (Cohn & Hough, 2008).
Labor productivity can be increased through; training of personnel to improve on their skills, retrenching unskilled labor, encouraging creativity and innovation this will lead to emergence of new and better ideas to help in firm’s decision-making. Teamwork also should be encouraged to attain the laid down objectives of the organization. Fair remunerating, promotions and motivation should be set in place to entice employees to be more productive thus enhancing overall employee productivity.
Proper working and favorable conditions should be enforced, low productivity of workers is seen in areas where employees work under stressful environments and unhygienic conditions, high labor productivity is characterized by favorable working conditions. Also to enhance high labor production proper equipment and machines that facilitate carrying out duties should be provided and old and oblate machines and equipment should be replaced (Safian, 2008).
Labor productivity is the measure of output per labor hour of a given input. Labor productivity is the real value of output to input to input of labor. The number of employees is used as the input factor but to be precise especially when calculating for part-time hours worked becomes the best input factor to consider. When labor productivity is used as a measure of efficiency it should be done carefully as it represents more than efficiency of the workers.
Labor productivity = output/ (input labour hours)
Factors that must be considered when calculating the labor productivity include; the number of hours worked, if the employee works overtime there should be an elaborate mechanism to compensate for overtime hours. Other factors to be considered are the nature and amount of capital equipment available, new technologies and managerial practices. Proper equipment lead to higher labor productivity (Cohn & Hough, 2008).
Productivity models
Cost-benefit model. This model is used in organizations that incur costs at expense of profits in near future. Thus cost and benefit models compare the gains made to the cost incurred. Under this model, the employees are expected to incur costs that streamline with the organization’s goals and objectives. This ensures that costs incurred are realistic and employees cannot make unrealistic expenditures. Cost-benefit is simply the value of the benefit of course of action less associated costs. The payback period is the time from accumulation of cost and date of gains. The point where gains are equal to cost is the breakeven point.
Cost-effectiveness models ensure that funds are effectively used and help management to understand the economic and health benefits of carrying out certain projects. The projects are not necessarily profitable but increase the overall productivity as the broad society is catered for in terms of health and other facilities, this results in economic growth and productivity (Safian, 2009).
In conclusion, productivity is essential in health care and it can be improved through vigorous training of personnel.
Reference list
Cohn, K. H., & Hough, D. E. (2008). The business of healthcare.USA: Praeger.
Huber, D. L. (2010). Leadership and nursing care management. USA: Sunders Elsevier.
Safian, S. C. (2009). Essential of healthcare compliance. USA: Cengage Learning.Inc.