Urban-Rural Perspective of Healthcare Management Coursework

The Healthcare Industry

The health care industry refers to a business sector that involves the offering of expertise or opinion of professionals and consultants or the offering of service with regards to the safety or enhancement of the health of the community as a whole or the healing and care of people who are injured, unwell, disabled, or in some form of poor health. The provision of contemporary health care relies on a developing group of qualified professionals joining together as an interdisciplinary squad.

The healthcare industry takes account of the offering of health services by a health care provider. More often than not, these services are sponsored by the patient himself or by his insurance company. However, these services can also be financed by the public administrative institutions through national health care schemes (such as the National Health Service in the United Kingdom) or may be provided for by NGOs, charities, or self-volunteers, predominantly in the poorer and third-world nations.

Consuming approximately 10 percent of the gross domestic product or GDP of the majority of first-world countries, health care can be considered to play an enormous role in a nation’s economy. Health care spending on medical facilities, professionals, hospitals or nursing homes, diagnostic laboratories, drugstores, medical apparatus producers, and other elements of the health care framework, in the year 2001, for the OECD countries stood at an average of 8.4 percent of the GDP with the United States toping the lists with 13.9% and the other two of the top three nations were Switzerland and Germany recording 10.9% and 10.7% respectively. (Dawson, 2009)

Scaling more than $4.5 trillion in terms of expenditure, the worldwide medical and healthcare industry has emerged as one of the planet’s biggest and fastest developing industries, constituted by several sectors including the pharmaceutical, medical apparatus and provisions, healthcare amenities, biotechnology, and alternative medication sectors. Without a doubt, the effective management and adequate delivery of such vital products across the supply chain of the healthcare sector are proportionately as intricate and significant as its magnitude and velocity. On the whole, the method of production and distribution of pharmaceutical products is quite identical to the systems adopted by other industries. Pharmaceutical manufacturing firms procure raw materials for the mass synthesis of active as well as passive components. (Smith, 2008) Subsequently, dosages are put together, packaged, and then distributed. The products flow starts at manufacturers’ stockrooms, goes to the wholesale distributors and logistic service providers, retail drugstores, medical establishments, and finally reaches the patient.

Healthcare Management

Proper execution of healthcare policies to take care of the ailing and ensure the safety of the health of the community, on the whole, requires an adequate supply of essential resources. However, valuable management practices in addition to effective leadership are extremely essential to exploit such resources successfully to attain optimized outcomes. “Good leadership and management are about providing direction to, and gaining commitment from, partners and staff, facilitating change and achieving better health services through efficient, creative and responsible deployment of people and other resources” (WHO, 2007). While top administrators lay down the planned vision and marshal the resources in order to realize organizational objectives, efficient managers warrant an effective organized structure and optimized consumption of resources so as to produce measurable results and accomplish the goals.

In the context of the management of health systems and services, the characters of the issues that need to be managed have a large degree of commonality across several diversified settings. All initiatives, plans, facilities, and regional health systems, irrespective of public or private orientation, need to be efficiently managed to varying degrees by emphasizing three primary aspects:

• Scope and scale of services distribution(planning, execution and monitoring and appraisal)
• Resources (e.g. workforce, financial plans, medicines, medical equipment, infrastructure, information structure)
• External relationships and collaborators and beneficiaries of services. (Marshall, 2008)

Healthcare Service Managers

Service managers in the healthcare industry are those individuals who are entrusted with responsibility and bear primary accountability for services, supplies, and relationships. The cardinal health service managers across healthcare establishments are chief officers of public health services such as state-appointed medical officers, program/initiative supervisors or administrators, and hospital and utility managers.

Managers operating in the health care sector usually are skilled and experienced in dealing with both, health and management issues. They are required to be equipped to cope with the ever-developing incorporated health care delivery structures, reorganization of work processes, technological advances, and an enhanced focus on strategies related to preventive care approaches. Progressively more health care managers look to work with establishments wherein they face everyday challenges to exercise their skill set by optimizing the level of competence of various interconnected service instances, including in-patient treatment to out-patient follow-up services. (Smith, 2008)

The top-level administrative managers and the associate managers are the health care executives who lay down the course of operations of the establishments in general. They focus on aspects like societal outreach, operation design, promotion, workforce-related issues, economics, and conformity with legal requisites. Their knowledge base is required to be comprehensive, entailing expertise in the clinical sphere along with proficiency in the business domain. They normally interact and communicate with civic assemblies, foster community contribution to health initiatives, and organize and manage the activities of the establishment and make sure that they are aligned with governmental or societal requirements. Top administrative managers devise long-term organizational plans and set objectives by evaluating the requirement for services, human resources, amenities and tools, and suggesting essential changes. These managers are required to possess effective leadership skills, together with technical proficiency, to deliver high-quality healthcare services while meeting the prerequisites of economic feasibility, cost control, and public and certified answerability. (Dawson, 2009)

Larger health care organizations typically employ the services of several associate managers to provide support to the top-level management and to take care of everyday chores. They may supervise organizational operations in clinical domains like nursing, surgical procedures, victuals, medical reports, and therapy; or the processes in a non-medical arena like economic considerations, housekeeping, workforce management, and information structuring. However, in smaller health care establishments, the top-level management is likely to be more involved in routine operations. For instance, many small-scale healthcare facility managers directly deal with the employees, finance, clinical activities, and admission procedure, and in addition shoulder greater responsibilities with regards to inpatient care. (Marshall, 2008)

Clinical managers on the other hand are entrusted with more specifically described and communicated roles in comparison to top-level general management and are skilled and/or experienced in a particular clinical domain. For instance, supervisors of the physical therapy division are proficient physical therapists themselves, and the majority of health information managers either hold a bachelor’s or a master’s degree in health information management. Such managers design and put policies and strategies into action; devise plans and goals; and create an operative framework; appraise workforce performance; generate execution reports and formulate budgets for their respective divisions; and synchronize processes with other managers. (Baggott, 2007)

Mostly, health care managers have to work for several hours at a stretch. Health care establishments like nursing facilities and hospitals are open continuously for 24 hours, and thus managers are required to be prepared to be called upon at any time to take care of operational difficulties or crisis situations. Health managers are normally in charge of funds, operational and infrastructural facilities, medical equipment, and the entire workforce. To be able to make effective judgments, they have to be receptive to a wide variety of options and should be proficient in evaluating contradictory and selective information. They should have a thorough understanding of financial and information schemes and be capable of deducing from available data. Inspiring others to execute their decisions necessitates that managers possess strong leadership attributes. Dexterity, subtlety, suppleness, and efficient communication skills are indispensable for health managers as interacting and communicating with others form an integral part of their job. (Dawson, 2009)

Healthcare Management from the Urban-Rural Perspective

Populations inhabiting rural or remote regions by and large experience a less encouraging health outcome in comparison to the status quo in metropolitan locales. Rural inhabitants have a greater occurrence of health risk aspects, higher frequency of admission to health establishments, more occurrences of “avoidable” deaths, and various other unfavorable health upshots. A lot of issues have a part to play in the existence of such degrees of differences including geographic remoteness, socioeconomic shortcomings, and a distinctive lack of healthcare service providing facilities, greater susceptibility to injury hazards, and the different necessities of the rural populations. In many parts of the world, it is not unusual for rural communities to be in excess of 1000 km away from townships that are able to provide basic services like victuals, banking, and medical facilities. In addition, the ideals, customs, and convictions of the rural population generally differ to a large extent from that of the urban dwellers. Various researches have confirmed that the rural population is a lot less likely or capable of seeking medical attention as compared to the populations residing in major metropolitan areas. (Trisolini, 2008)

A financially secure healthcare facility is vital for the sustenance of a community’s health in addition to its economy, particularly in a rural location. Local healthcare providers not only offer inhabitants vital health care facilities but, in addition, are also provide a significant employment opportunity and contribute to the local economies. However, under-facilitated rural healthcare facilities find it hard to sustain financial steadiness and react to the increasing demands for health technologies and standardized quality health outcomes. Traditionally, such small-scaled health organizations have been exposed to difficulties that were both intrinsic (associated with the operative issues in the hospital and its immediate surroundings), as well as extrinsic (concerning wide scaled repayment structures, policymaking, and legislative issues) in nature. (Baggott, 2007)

Bearing in mind such differences, it is obvious that health care management patterns observed in rural health organizations would vary up to a certain extent as compared with those in urbanized healthcare facilities. However, it should be noted that the basic functionalities as discussed in the previous section remain common to both settings. Nevertheless, the managers of rural health centers are more likely to focus more on issues such as financial payments, insurances, and awareness-building programs. Continuous enhancement of services is a key aspect to the success of rural health management. On the other hand, the management of tertiary hospitals based in large metropolitan areas present different challenges which may be more complex in nature. However, on account of the more organized nature, management processes in this case are more streamlined and efficient. (Marshall, 2008)

References

Baggott, R. (2007). Understanding Health Policy, Bristol: Policy Press.

Dawson, D. (2009). ‘Conflicting stories of virtue in UK healthcare: bringing together organisational studies and ethics’. Business Ethics: A European Review, 18(2) 95-109.

Marshall, J. (2008) ‘Organizational change in the National Health Service: lessons from the staff’. Strategic Change 17(7-8) 251-267.

Smith, R.B. (2008). ‘Medicaid Markets and Paediatric Patient Safety in Hospitals’. Health Services Research 42(5)1981-1998.

Trisolini, M.G. (2008). ‘Applying business management models in health care’. The International Journal of Health Planning and Management 17(4) 295-314.

WHO. (2007). Building leadership and management capacity in health.