Introduction
The Royal United Hospital Bath (NHS) Trust is one of the renowned hospitals that provide quality-oriented health care services to the majority of patients who come from diverse areas of the United States (Care Quality Commission 2014). Since its inception, the hospital has been praised for its provision of reliable treatment services to hapless patients’ especially those from poverty-stricken areas. However, the hospital is facing various challenges that threaten to impede its exemplary performance. The challenges include but are not limited to lack of adequate resources for the acquisition of additional healthcare equipment, inferior working attitude, poor record keeping, and inadequate staff. The primary focus of this paper is to discuss some of the barriers that have proved to be daunting to both the hospital and the wider population and how these challenges may be alleviated.
Barriers affecting delivery of quality health care at RUH hospital
Lack of resources is one of the factors that have proved to be a real impediment threatening the hospital’s ability to provide the necessary services effectively (Care Quality Commission 2014). The hospital is deficient in financial resources for the advancement of its infrastructure, acquisition of new medical machines and drugs. The investment in a new equipment and infrastructural expansion requires over $148,000 that the institution cannot raise currently.
Inter-agency interactions: The hospital operates in a sector where interaction between medical institutions is very poor. The medical service providers operate as competitors against the expectations of the stakeholders (Srinivasan 2008). Lack of interaction between agencies is impeding research activities, sharing of information and formulation of quality solutions to the emerging complications. RUH hospital is facing difficulty due to inter-agency interaction complications that denies it the opportunity to outsource some medical equipment and experts in diverse fields.
Legislation:- The new legislation that has been developed is set to affect operations of the hospital greatly. This is because the legislation seeks to revolutionize service delivery in the health sector through the application of stiffer benchmarks and conditions for operations such as the law regarding licensing, threshold medical hardware and software needed for operations and investment capacity (Vincent, 2010). The new laws seek to impact the hospitals economic, social and structural growth if not addressed amicably.
Interaction between people and organizational structure:- The hospital’s performance is threatened by the adoption of vertical organizational structure that does not facilitate social advancement and interaction between people. The company’s structure makes coordination of activities tiresome including interaction between people due to communication difficulties that arises.
Poor record keeping: The Royal United Hospital has been known to face massive challenges in terms of keeping their patients record. They lose volumes of data and information relating to the patients diagnosis, and it is for this reason that the hospital loses track of its own patients (Vincent, 2010). The loss of data affects the hospital’s ability to deliver quality and real time treatment to patients.
Lack of proper communication:- Communication is critical to ensuring that there is a stable relationship between the management and the hospital staff. The aspect has been lacking ingredient at RUH hospital thereby exposing it to inferior management of patient issues. It also reduces the speed of service delivery as reaching a concerned person with the capacity for addressing an emerging emergency is difficult. Poor communication increases the levels at which mistakes occur when patients are administered by the staff (Srinivasan 2008).
Lack of necessary facilities and monitoring systems: – The absence of health facilities and monitoring systems has impacted the quality of health services provided to the patients. Certain diseases affecting patients cannot be treated due to lack of health facilities and monitoring systems. It is with this profound reason that many patients succumb due to the absence of the needed health facilities and monitoring systems.
Causes of the barriers
The identified barriers to quality service delivery in the hospital, as highlighted, are numerous. According to Vincent (2010), the causes require prompt mitigation due to their detrimental nature. They include lack of automated information systems, poor interactions between people, proper training sessions of employees and insufficient focus on organizational goals. They also include lack of a credible health care culture of excellence, inconsistent payment policies, lack of effective data administration system and poor reward systems to boost the morale of employees. For the hospital to register improved performance, it must ensure that these issues are addressed effectively using conventional approaches.
How to face the above barriers
To address the barriers effectively, the hospital should seek funding from donors, well-wishers, and government to enhance its financial strength needed to finance the acquisition of new machines and infrastructural expansion. The hospital should purchase new health facilities and monitoring systems for the main purpose of providing stellar health services whilst also fulfilling its goal of saving lives (Lazakidou & Daskalaki 2012). Likewise, the hospital should focus on transforming the attitude of the staff towards work to avert cases of negligence. It is also vital for the hospital to employ hospital staffs who seem to have passion in their work. Additionally, the hospital needs to provide motivating and worthy salaries for its hospital staffs to motivating the workers. The hospital staffs should be trained on how to use the hospital devices in a competent and erudite manner. The training is essential in equipping the staff with requisite incentives that are necessary for attending and treating the vulnerable patients in a stellar manner.
Conclusion
Indeed, RUH hospital should craft viable modalities to mitigate the effects of the probable barriers to its success that include inferior inter-agency interactions, stiff legislations and organizational structures. Other barriers that the health center should strive to curb are poor interaction between people, lack of resources, poor communication systems and record keeping. Effective management of the barriers will advance the hospital’s chances of attaining its optimal performance levels and ensure delivery of quality services to clients.
Reference List
Care Quality Commission (CQC) 2014, Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust: Quality Report, Web.
Levin, L, Hennessy, D & Petrila, J 2010, Mental Health Services a Public Health Perspective, Oxford, Oxford University Press, USA.
Lazakidou, A & Daskalaki, A 2012, Quality Assurance in Healthcare Service Delivery, Nursing, and Personalized Medicine Technologies and Processes, Hershey, PA, Medical Information Science Reference.
Srinivasan, V 2008, Managing a Modern Hospital, New Delhi, Sage Publications.
Vincent, C 2010, Patient Safety, New York, NY, John Wiley & Sons.