Introduction
The healthcare sector in the United States is the most expensive in the world. However, for a long, it has struggled with the physician-patient ratio resulting in high-quality healthcare provision inadequacy due to medical practitioners’ scarcity (Zhang et al., 2018). Despite the creation of a comprehensive structure, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), to enhance medical treatment access and minimize healthcare costs, the country must prepare for significant physician turnover and shortages in the future (Kirch and Petelle, 2017). New policies are essential to address this never-ending issue in the sector.
Background
Relative to Ascension, the healthcare institution, like many in the U.S. is facing numerous challenges with its employees. In the external and internal environment, the healthcare institution is being forced to lose hundreds of employees through retirements, terminations, or suspensions (Landi, 2022). In the wake of COVID-19, the challenge has been exacerbated by the existing staff shortage. Unless the U.S. government redesigns its healthcare policies, Ascension and many other hospitals will continue to face the havoc attributed to staff shortages.
SWOT Findings
In the U.S., Ascension is the leading Catholic and non-profit healthcare system. Based on its position, the healthcare facility has the capacity to offer more than $2.2 billion in care to its patients (Ascension, 2022). That has been strengthened by its ability to offer its services to the low economic income status patients while providing associated community projects (Minda, 2019). Moreover, being able to offer the largest non-profit senior care facilities has elevated the healthcare system to reach more people in the communities (Ascension, 2020). With Covid-19, maintaining a positive financial position became a challenge for Ascension. The tendency to rely on elective surgery impacted the financial flow of the hospital since the services were put on a halt (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2022). The other weakness that became evident during the pandemic was Ascension’s reliance on favorable investment performance and the government to maintain operation in its network (Drucker et al., 2020). For Ascension to minimize these weaknesses, it has to re-strategize its approach to equity and investment to avoid reliance on elective surgery, favorable investment performance, and the government for future economic shocks.
Ascension has an opportunity to recapture its market share by incorporating a better telehealth system. Moreover, it must finalize its transition to Aspirus and in St. Mary’s healthcare, and likewise, the healthcare system must soon disband its AMITA alliance with Illinois (Gottsacker, 2021). One approach Ascension can take to minimize staff shortage is that it must change its leadership style by implementing transformative leadership, which facilitates the development of relationships between leaders and followers (Boamah et al., 2018). Transformative leaders provide their followers with structurally enabling variables, which allows them to realize meaningful work.
Conclusion and Recommendation
Like all healthcare institutions in the U.S., Ascension faces the challenge of staff shortage. The potential solution to it is implementing transformative leadership practices. For its future operations, the healthcare system must change how it approaches its financing. Reliance on elective surgery proved incapable during the pandemic; therefore, Ascension must develop alternative income sources to better handle its financial challenges in potential economic shocks. Based on the SWOT research, two objectives for Ascension are, to implement transformative leadership and retain staff by 21 percent by December 31, 2022. The other objective is to improve its income by 18 percent by performing other surgeries by the end of the year.
References
Ascension. (2020). Ascension Medical Group: 2020 Year in Review. Web.
Ascension. (2022). About Our Healthcare Organization | Ascension. Ascension.org. Web.
Boamah, S. A., Laschinger, H. K. S., Wong, C., & Clarke, S. (2018). Effect of transformational leadership on job satisfaction and patient safety outcomes. Nursing Outlook, 66(2), 180-189.
Drucker, J.; Silver-Greenberg, J., & Kliff, S. (2020). Wealthiest hospitals got billions in bailout for struggling health providers.. The New York Times.
Gottsacker, E. (2021). Aspirus formally welcomes former Ascension hospitals into its system. WXPR. Web.
Kaiser Family Foundation. (2022). Checking In With Ascension Health, Largest Catholic Health System. Kaiser Health News. Web.
Kirch, D. G., & Petelle, K. (2017). Addressing the physician shortage. JAMA, 317(19), 1947-1948.
Landi, H. (2022). Ascension posts $884M loss in Q1 as hospitals hit with COVID surges, higher expenses. fiercehealthcare.com. Web.
Minda, J. (2019). Ascension brings more intentionality to building solidarity with the poor. Chausa.org. Web.
Zhang, X., Tai, D., Pforsich, H. (2018). United States registered nurse workforce report card andshortage forecast: A revisit. American Journal of Medical Quality, 33(3), 229-236.