Introduction
Healthcare is continuously changing at a fast and growing pace. Healthcare leaders and managers are trying to keep up as they sharpen their leadership competencies to remain effective in their organizations. The knowledge and skills health care leaders are required to have to meet their day-to-day responsibilities are very high. Leaders that are strong and efficient possess certain characteristics that are extremely important in the workplace to achieve their goals, as well as meet political, social, and environmental goals.
UnitedHealthcare is an organization in the healthcare industry that has leaders who are navigating the constant political, social, and environmental changes within their organization.
To understand how UnitedHealthcare (UHC) responds to change and its influence on decision-making, an interview was conducted with Dr. Srinivas Merugu, MD. Dr. Merugu is the Senior Medical Director for UnitedHealthcare’s Community and State Plan.
Dr. Merugu oversees the medical and clinical operations on the state level and has been with UHC for over 6-years. Dr. Merugu brings 25 years of experience in the medical field to his role at UHC. However, his passion is helping to carry out UHC’s mission of helping people live healthier lives.
During the interview, Dr. Merugu was asked a series of questions that addressed a change in response to organizational, community, political, social, and global needs and how the organization monitors community wellness and anticipates community needs. The relationship between the purpose of the organization and specific drivers of change, and the effectiveness of traditional leadership models that are predominantly used throughout the organization just to highlight a few of the questions addressed. This paper will provide a synopsis and analysis of the interview while addressing how UHC’s change leadership is essential to moving the organization towards positive outcomes.
Organizational Change in Response to Community, Political, Social, and Global Needs
The purpose of UHC is to help people live healthier lives and ensure that their health system works better for everyone. The organization holds a principle that individuals should access quality health services without straining financially.
Thus, by offering various insurance benefits, UHC ensures that society is in a better position than it previously was.
The organization is consequently changing to accommodate the emerging changes in the healthcare industry.
One of the major changes in the firm in 2022 is the introduction of Medicare plan advantage, which covers both parts A and B of Medicare in addition to other benefits. According to Oregon and Berson (2019), today’s healthcare system is centered on investigating and meeting consumer needs. UHC also has a new prescription drug plan which, together with other benefits, offers personalized consumer experiences. According to Dr. Merugu, various changes are implemented in the company to ensure expanded access to health plans with distinguished value created in a simple and affordable design. The organization also plans to expand its Medicare consumers to reach 94% of the Medicare beneficiaries. The plan is to maintain the country’s largest Medicare advantage by targeting 3.1 million people in 276 counties accessing standard plans (“Medicare advantage,” 2022). UHC will attract potential consumers with its affordable plans.
Amongst the needs driving change in UHC is the desire to be different in the healthcare industry. Dr. Merugu mentions that with tremendous changes in the industry, healthcare is becoming expensive every day. The firm is then forced to offer quality services at an affordable price while still maintaining the competitive space in the sector. High expectations from the consumers and policymakers are also driving needs in the company. Thus, UHC makes multiple changes to match these expectations to ensure operating stability. The nature of change in the organization is to qualify life events. The changes are designed to meet the emerging trends of needs to sustain human existence. The changes have global effects that alter both the enterprise and the lives of the community.
Change Leadership: Challenge the Status Quo
The challenges of the healthcare status quo are based on politics and economics. Dr. Merugu state that the healthcare status quo is made up of the increasing price of health services. The policymakers in the political areas basing their claims on striking cost of living are making it impossible for insurance companies such as UHC to offer cheaper health services. Today’s healthcare status quo entails overpricing, fragmentation, and overtreatment (Vogenberg, 2019). Health services are highly-priced as low-quality unnecessary care is offered to meet the prices. The increasing cost of living and medical reforms are high contributors to this status.
UHC operates on transformative change leadership concepts and practices to cause a change in the social system and individuals. As a leading health insurance company, UHC operates around its mission to offer quality services with reduced financial hardships. The organization creates and maintains a changing environment whereby the management is always ready for positive change. Some of the concepts and practices include integrity, compassion, performance, innovations, and relationships (“Our vision for empowering health,” 2022). UHC practices integrity is offering services that meet customer needs at the right prices. It also shows compassion to its consumers by offering additional benefits to standard insurance plans and other services. The organization encourages maximum performance, innovative projects, and positive relationships to meet its purpose.
UHC employs a thought leadership strategy to drive changes in the organization. According to Dr. Merugu, the firm considers itself a leader in the industry, and as innovators, they see themselves as leaders. Through the thought strategy, the healthcare company demonstrates its expertise in the insurance field. Some of the expected outcomes of this strategy include competitive advantage through product differentiation, boosted sales, higher profitability, reinforced brand, and personal satisfaction. The actual outcomes attained by the UHC are above the average levels of these factors.
How the Organization Monitors Community Wellness and Anticipates Community Needs
As an insurance company that offers Medicare and Medicaid services privately, UHC measures community wellness through various factors. Some of the factors include health disparities amongst the targeted population, the number of insured people in the community, mortality rate, trending diseases, and elderly population needs (“Health and wellness,” 2022). The desired health outcomes for UHC upon cross-checking the level of wellness are an equal distribution of health services to all consumers and an increased number of insured people. Other outcomes include reduced mortality rate due to insurance coverage of trendy diseases and extended life expectancy for the elderly.
About the question of how UHC collects its data, Dr. Merugu provided that the claims are major sources of data. External sources are HEDIS and American Health Rankings, which offer countrywide surveys and reviews regarding the general healthcare industry. To determine community needs, UHC does individual surveys among their organization members to collect their opinions (“Health and wellness,” 2022). The organization also analyzes the community through social determinants of health to find their needs. Partnerships with local people also help in learning more about gaps in societal health. For further means, UHC collaborates with HRSA and FQHC to determine society’s needs.
Analyze the Relationship between the Purpose of the Organization and Specific Drivers of Change
The specific change drivers, such as the prescription of drugs, taxes, and outpatient services, do not reinforce the purpose of UHC. The three specific drivers lead to an increase in the cost of premiums between 2013 and 2018. According to UnitedHealth Group (2019), the medical drivers of change recorded an increase of 5.5% price between 2013 and 2018. The hike in health costs was prompted by the annual growth of outpatient services which grew by 8%, and prescription drugs by 7% (UnitedHealth Group, 2019). Increased federal and ACA health insurance tax significantly drove up the premiums costs. As provided by ACA, tax on health insurance increased by 20% from 2017 to 2018 (UnitedHealth Group, 2019. Oreg and Berson (2019) also affirm that the increased cost of living hikes taxes and the general cost of healthcare. The change in the cost of premiums, therefore, prevents UHC from its purpose of offering quality services without people straining financially.
The Effectiveness of Traditional Leadership Models within the Organization
UHC practices integrated psychological and situational or contingency leadership models to drive change. These two models are applied in the organization because they allow the leaders to be ready for emerging changes (“Our vision for empowering health,” 2022). The models also allow the leaders to be thoughtful and e creative to effectively drive change. Integrated psychological models integrate thinking into the four models including trait-based, behavioral ideals, situational, and functional leadership models. Combining the different models and adding critical thinking enables the leaders to develop the best change strategy. The situational model allows leaders to deal with situations as they arise during their operations (Garfield et al., 2019). In the application of this model, leadership is not permanent but changes with incoming changes in the organization.
The traditional leadership models applied by UHC as an insurance company are appropriate. The healthcare industry is vastly changing as influenced by various factors, including evolving consumer needs, technology, the economy, and politics (Garfield et al., 2019). Practicing leadership models that allow leaders to act upon changes and think critically before implementing them is essential. The global healthcare service competition also requires an organization to have strategic models to deal with changes (Garfield et al., 2019). Furthermore, the models are effectively applied in the firm because they bring outstanding results. The application of these models could, however, be made differently by leaning more on the situational or contingency model. This model seeks to mold leaders to whom the current event needs. In handling the specific drivers of change between 2013 and 2018, the organization could act according to the situation. That way, while increasing the price of premiums, the firm should have added other expected benefits for the customers.
Conclusion
UnitedHealthcare organization has strong leadership and the ability to monitor community needs to deliver change. The firm is vigilant to the emerging changes caused by political, organizational, community, social, and global needs. The organization leaders through thought strategy act to rectify the healthcare status quo by putting quality and product differentiation before prices. Various leadership models are applied to effect the changes based on the community’s needs. UHC works closely with other healthcare service rendering and monitoring firms to improve their services and meet customer needs.
References
Garfield, Z. H., Hubbard, R. L., & Hagen, E. H. (2019). Evolutionary models of leadership. Human Nature, 30(1), 23-58. Web.
Health and wellness. (2022). UnitedHealthcare. Web.
Medicare advantage (Part C) plans. (2022). UnitedHealthcare. Web.
Oreg, S., & Berson, Y. (2019). Leaders’ impact on organizational change: Bridging theoretical and methodological chasms.Academy of Management Annals, 13(1), 272-307. Web.
Our vision for empowering health. (2022). UnitedHealthcare. Web.
UnitedHealth Group. (2021). UnitedHealth group brief reveals key drivers of health care premium increases. Web.
Vogenberg, F. R. (2019). US healthcare trends and contradictions in 2019. American Health & Drug Benefits, 12(1), 40. Web.