The strategic training of employees in the health care organization is a priority. The research focuses on the reasons for the training of the health care employees. The study includes the different ways of training the employees to prioritize the patients’ benefits. The cost-effective strategic training of the health care organization’s employees should ensure evident dominance of the health care organization market segment.
The culture of the health care organization influences its ability to manage the employees. Likewise, health care management emphasizes all employees must implement a patient-based work attitude. Peter Ginter (2006) emphasized the employees’ prioritizing of the patient’s needs over the needs of the employees ensures a competitive advantage.
The healthcare organization would have an edge over the competitors in the same health care market segment. The clients would prefer to return to health care health care organization that pamper and prioritize the patients’ needs. For example, the Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, Florida, created its vision to be the best health care organization in the United States.
The chief executive officer revised the company’s organizational culture to achieve the challenging vision. Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut engaged in the clients-based health care organization strategy successfully. The patient satisfaction of the health care organization services had soured to almost 98 percent.
In addition, the health care organization’ client-based culture translated to having more meaningful employees. The employees felt happy being an important part of the patient’s health-recovery program. Consequently, the employee turnover ratio had favorably dropped. The Derby hospital created a strong selling employee-based point that edged out the competitors in the community.
Management focused on enhancing employee teamwork. Each of the employees had been retrained in the art of health care servicing. The employees were taught to use teamwork in their aim to prioritize the clients’ health care needs. The employees were persuaded to contribute their share for the entire health care organization team to succeed.
The teamwork-based retraining of the health care organization’s employees is grounded on consensus. Consequently, each employee contributed his or her share to the success of the health care organization’s health care program. Each employee is normally proud to go out of one’s way to give excellent health care services to both the inpatient and outpatient clients.
The employees are persuaded to cooperate as well as coordinate with the other health care workers for the quicker recovery of the patients. However, the patients are taught that hastening the recovery of the patients must not result to lesser quality health care services.
For example, the medical technologists must reduce the time needed to come up with the medical exam results. The medical exam results include the patients’ blood type, stool exam, urine exam, and other related exams. The health care organization’s nutritionist generates a report of the diverse food needs of the health care organization’s patients.
Likewise, the nurse spends more quality time beside each patient. Quality time does not mean the quantity of time spent. Rather, quality time means the quality of each time used on each time period spent with the inpatient and outpatient health care organization clients.
The health care organization’s employees are trained to implement human values within the entity’s premises. To ensure success, the health care organization pampers its health care employees. However, the pampering of the employees must be within allowable cost containment limits. The health care organization is like any other organization; it needs revenues to pay for the cost of running a health care facility.
The health care employees are given an above average salary in order to ensure loyalty. Loyalty translates to a reduction in the number of employees resigning from the health care organization. Loyalty includes giving more than 100 percent of the health care employees’ quality services. Loyalty entails observing the employees showing their loyalty by pampering the patients with above-industry services (Blum, 1996).
Further, the organization must hire employees who are loyal to the health care organization’s goals and objective. Study conducted showed that absenteeism translates to poor work output in the health care setting. A study conducted at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center outpatient clinic indicated there is an inverse correlation between a health care worker’s sick leaves and work output.
However, employees having red flags of continuous Monday absences and Friday absences result to poor health care organization work output. Management must strive to resolve the absenteeism issue to increase the workers’ overall performance results.
Employees who refuse to comply with the entity’s client-based work priorities must be removed from the organization. The employees who refuse to decrease their lackluster service quality during their stay in the health care organization must be retrenched.
The employees showing unabated laziness in the performance of their health care organization duty shall be unceremoniously. The employees who refuse to comply with other client-based policies of the health care organization shall be dismissed from the health care organization (Libet, 2001).
James Johnson (1995) proposed the health care organization should train the employees to adhere to the health care organization’s total quality management. Total quality management is grounded on patient-centered culture. The company must hire the new employees based on their capacity to tow the line or obey the current and prospective policies and procedures of the organization.
The right employees shall be those who help in the organizations creation of value through patient health care activities. The leaders must impose on the employees that the organizational culture must be implemented at all times, without exception.
Mary Richardson (1999) theorized the leaders of the health care organization must be examples of organization’s culture. The leaders implement a variety of value enhancing strategies. The leaders, including shift supervisors, shall show loyalty to the company. The same leaders must show a patient-centered health care work attitude. The leaders must be accessible to the subordinates for advice or help.
The leaders serve as guides for the current and future subordinates in terms of complying with all patient-centered health care responsibilities. The leaders must confront and even reprimand each subordinate who violates the company’s patient-based health care procedures.
The leaders must focus on determining if the health care procedures are being done with an eagerness to help, not an eagerness to finish the job. Consequently, most of the patients can easily see if the nurse or other health care professional love their job or simply going through the motions of health care services without any concern for the patients’ present health condition.
The leader must immediate move to stop a nurse or other health care organization worker who refuses to change one’s behavior to what is expected of them. The leaders must also monitor each employee to ensure no one steps out of line. There are times when the nurse is too busy.
Such times tempt the nurse or other health care professional to violate the health care organization’s work benchmarks. The leader will roam the shift in order to deter the subordinates from thinking of violating any health care organization policies and procedures.
The health care organization must focus on its employees aiming for health care awards. The SSM Health care is sponsored by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary in St. Louise, Missouri. The SSM health care organization is one of the biggest Catholic health care delivery systems in the United States. It has a huge 4,500 inpatient health care bed capacity.
The same SSM Health care enjoined its employees to strive to do their best in their duty to bring back the patients to their prior fully recovered health status. Consequently, the SSM Health care won the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award in the area of health care organization. The said award is offered to organizations that excel the best quality service in separate categories.
The said SSM Health care’s aim is to work for excellence in all facets of the health care organization. Excellence, in the SSM Health care tradition, is focused on striving to improve whatever has been improved. Improvement is a continuous process.
Further, the secret to SSM Health care’s winning the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige Award can be divided into four areas. First, the SSM Health care organization set up a framework for analysis, decision, making, and action. The setup resulted to the entity’s focusing on the more important areas for improvement. The SSM Health care organization sets up a set of criteria to determine the prioritization of activities.
Next, the SSM Health care organization’s leaders draw up several alternatives to resolve each employee- related and patient-related case. Taking into consideration all the alternatives, SSM health care organization’s management chooses and implements the chosen recommendations for implementation. The implementation is classified as the action plan.
Second, SSM health care organization’s management instructs its employees to do their share to accomplishing the organization’s mission. The management designs and implements its patient-based mission by taking all inputs from the affected employees. The employees’ inputs include their opinions, suggestions, recommendations, and complaints.
The integration of the employees’ inputs is a good management strategy. The patients will be more than willing to comply with management’s mission strategies if their inputs are included in the crafting of the organization’s mission statement.
Some of the employees may be resistant to the company’s instructions to implement its mission statement if their inputs were not asked. One good reason is that the mission statement may be too high for the employees to implement. The employees’ inputs are necessary in order for health care organization to realize that the employees’ inputs are needed to make the mission statement more realistic.
Third, the SSM health care organization’s management impress on its employees that it is the results that counts most. The setting of the company’s goals will serve as a guide for the employees to pursue. However, the actual outcome of the employees’ outputs will translate to the employees’ performance grade. Each employee is made accountable for one’s individual actions.
The action accountability includes one’s compliance with the overall team performance. This means that the employee’s performance is a failure if each t employee’s team’s overall performance score is a failure. The purpose is to ensure that everyone in the team cooperates with the other members of the team.
Team scoring is grounded on the theory of synergy. Under the synergy theory, one employee’s output plus anther employee’s output is equal to more than two person’s outputs. This means that the team effort is more important compared to the performance of each team member’s performance.
Going back to the organizational goal issue, the accomplishment of organizational goal is grounded on the synergy contributed by each member of the team. The goal is significantly influenced by the capacity of each employee to contribute their optimum share to the achievement of the organizational goal.
In the case of SSM health care organization’s management, the health care organization implements different goals for different activities. The management ensures that all activities can geared towards accomplishment of the preset goals and objectives.
After each activity, the SSM health care organization’s management compares the actual health care organization output against the preset benchmarks. The SSM health care organization’s management adjusts the benchmarks in relation to the actual health care organization output.
For example, management will increase its periodic goals or benchmarks if the goals are easily reached. However, SSM health care organization’s management will lower the prior period’s benchmark or goal if the employees find it very difficult to comply with the prior period’s goals, benchmarks, and objectives.
The goal setting and achieving is very important to both health care organization’s management and the affected health care employees. Both management and the employees will feel proud when they reach the health care organization’s benchmarks, goals, or objectives.
On the other hand, both management and the employees will be disheartened when the actual work performances do not reach the established benchmarks, goals and objectives.
Fourth, the SSM health care organization’s management implements a dedicated leadership stance. The employees are welcomed by all leaders of the health care organization. The employees can approach their supervisors, managers, and other higher ranking officers.
The employees are encouraged by management to voice their complaints, suggestions, recommendations, and other inputs. Management impresses on the employees that their inputs are very important to the overall health care organization’s continued leadership in the health care organization market segment. Management immediately acts on the employees’ inputs.
The employees are happy with the current management-employee relationship. In return, the employees feel they are a much-needed part of the health care organization’s success. The employees contribute by placing the patient’s interest over the employees’ own individual interests.
Because of management’s attitude towards their employees, the employees do not have second thoughts on transferring to other health care organizations. Because of the employees loyalty and dedication to the health care organization’s policies, procedures, goals, benchmarks, and objectives, there is lower management restructuring.
Further, the success of the SSM health care organization’s management’s employee strategy influences the employees’ eagerness to excel in all their assigned health care tasks. Both management and employees contribute to the streamlining of the organization’s overall health care activities.
The employees contribute to the streamlining in terms of faster issuances of mammogram results, allowing the patients a round the clock visiting privilege, as well as approving the inpatient’s ordering meals from outside the hospital any time of the day or night.
Such patient- pampering activities are grounded on the organizations’ stance to give the patients full allowable control of the patients’ life while recuperating inside the health care organization. However, the patients’ control is limited by the health care organization’s policies. Thus, the patients cannot violate any of the entity’s policies.
Furthermore, the organization pampers the employees. Normally, a pampered employee will return the favor to management. Offering the employees above-average salary will persuade the employees to work more quality hours. The offer of other benefits like paid leaves will encourage the employees to stay with the health care organization longer.
Offering better working conditions will convince the employees to spend more hours beside the patient and lesser time idling around in the health care organization’s nurses’ station reading newspapers or pocket books.
Management takes care of its health care organization employees’ welfare to increase employee loyalty. A study had been conducted on the health care needs of the National Health Services employees. The management of many health care organizations includes the caring for the health of its employees. The caring part includes giving affordable salaries and benefits to the employees.
However, management must have enough cash inflows to pay for the budgeted employee salaries and other benefits. A study was conducted on 2,300 health care workers generated a 44 percent response. The findings of the research indicated that most of the health care organization’s management persuades their employees to have a healthy lifestyle.
Consequently, a majority of the health workers are physically healthy. In addition, a majority of the health care organization employees surveyed were focused on improving their current health care status. In addition, a majority of the surveyed health care organization employees do not smoke. Likewise, it is normal for the health care organization employees to drink intoxicating liquor or drinks within the recommended levels.
Further, most of the health care organization employees exercise to keep themselves healthy. The managers or leaders of the health care organization were very instrumental in persuading their employees to prioritize having a healthy body so the can continue in the health care organization’s efforts to aid in the recuperation of its inpatient and outpatient clients (Jinks, 2003).
Primarily, management must base their employee benefits on their resources. Basically, all businesses are engaged for a profit. The health care organization sets up its operations to generate cash inflows. Cash inflows are generated from selling its health care services. The patients pay for the services offered by the health care organization.
Consequently, an increase in the health care organization’s patients translates to an increase in the company’s cash inflows. An increase in the organization’s cash inflows precipitates to an increase in the health care organization’s capacity to increase the health care employees’ salaries and wages. The health care organization’s services include all physical exam services.
The physical exam services include mammograms. The services also include blood pressure monitoring. Other health care services include X ray of different patient body parts. Likewise, the health care services focus medical advices. The heart doctor offers medical advices and prescribes medicines for the recovery of the heart patient.
The diabetes doctor offers medical advice and recommends medicines to be taken to relieve the symptoms and to help in the recuperation of the diabetes patient. The surgeon is hired by the health care organization to help in the surgery of its patients.
The surgeon also offers advice and dictates the medicine intake schedule of the surgery patient. The revenues are needed to pay for the salary and other benefits of the health care organization patients (Besley, 2008).
However, the hospital administration should not exceed its budget. The health care organization must achieve its bottom line. All organizations are required to achieve their bottom line in order to avoid bankruptcy. The bottom line occurs when the company, especially the health care organization, generates net profits.
A net profit occurs when the health care organization’ total revenues exceed the total expenses of running the daily operations of the business. The employees’ salaries and other benefits are included in the company’s total expenses.
An increase in the salaries and benefits precipitates to a decrease in the company’s net profit figure. If necessary, it is very evident that the health care organization must retrench its employees to order to achieve a bottom line financial status (Brigham, 2001).
Based on the above discussion, the strategic training of employees in the health care organization is of prime importance. There are several reasons for the training of the health care employees. Some of the reasons include prioritizing filling the needs of the health care organization patients. Another reason is ensuring employee loyalty to the health care organization.
Another reason is to ensure employees prioritize achievement of the health care organization’s goals, benchmarks, and objectives with flying colors.
The organization must ensure that its employee salaries and benefits are not significant enough to remove the health care organization’s necessary bottom line financial status. Indeed, the cost-effective strategic training of the health care organization’s employees should ensure significant dominance of the health care organization market segment.
References
Besley, S. (2008). Essentials of Managerial Finance. New York: Cengage Press.
Blum, T. (1996). Workplace Characteristics and Health Care Cost Containment Practices. Journal of Management, 22, 675-701.
Brigham, E. (2001). Fundamentals of Financial Management. London: Harcourt Press.
Ginter, P. (2006). Strategic Management of Health Care Organizations. New York: J. Wiley & Sons.
Jinks, A. (2003). A Survey of the Health Care Needs of Hospital Staff: Implications for the Health Care Managers. Journal of Nursing Management, 11, 343-350.
Johnson, J. (1995). Total Quality Management as a Health Care Corporate Strategy. International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, 8, 23-28.
Libet, J. (2001). Absenteeism and Productivity Among Mental Health Employees. Administration and Productivity Among Mental Health Employees, 29, 41-50.
Richardson, M. (1999). Contemporary Organizational Strategies for Enhancing Value in Health Care. International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, 12, 183 -189.