Case Study : Pate Memorial Hospital

An organization such as the Pocahontas Memorial Hospital (PMH) is established to be a primary care source for a rural community, serving 5% of the state’s population (Pocahontas Memorial Hospital, 2013). PMH wishes to deliver compassionate care and promote healthy lifestyles through working collaboratively with other healthcare facilities, and delivering adequate patient education, while sustaining financial viability (Pocahontas Memorial Hospital, 2016). This organization would like to offer a comprehensive satellite health clinic within Pocahontas County, as the strategy to intervene existing weaknesses and threats to the health of the community of Pocahontas County.

Pate Memorial Hospital is a 600-bed, independent, not-for-profit, self-supporting hospitals. PHC, an ambulatory health care facility, was opened by PMH. Sherri Worth, a new assistant administrator of Pate Memorial Hospital in charge of the PHC, was told that a firm plan establishes a clinic five blocks north of PHC. It is a big competitor for PHC. On the other hand, financial problems, Short service hours, long waiting time and lacking of gynecological services are all be the problem faced by Worth. Therefore, Sherri was requested to analyze the PHC’s performance and take Medcenter, a possible competitor, into consideration which either did or not opens a clinic in north.

Jones Regional Medical Center is a huge academic health center with 900 beds and are known for its research and teaching hospitals. Additionally, the IT staff at Jones supports 300 applications and 12,000 workstations. The center uses Technology Med (TechMed) for their admitting system. The system includes registration, inpatient charge, payment entry, master patient index, admission, hospital billing, and more. The TechMed system has been accessible since 1998; Jones is beginning to plan a replacement of this systems because of the fragility of the software (Wager, 2013).

Another threat is the current state of rural hospitals nationwide. According to the case study, about 25% of Americans live in rural areas and only about 10% of physicians actually practice in rural areas. There is a 15% gap in the ratio of rural citizens to available practicing physicians. This is a threat to ELH’s need to attract and hire more physicians. In relation to rural hospitals, citizens have longer drive times to their medical facilities. This causes them to delay routine visits which subsequently exacerbates

1. Using the historical data as a guide (Exhibit 6.1), construct a pro forma (forecasted) profit and loss statement for the clinic's average month for all of 2010 assuming the status quo. With no change in volume (utilization), is the clinic projected to make a profit?

Since most specialty procedures are inpatient services, EMC’s inpatient occupancy rate suffers. The occupancy rate for Emanuel Medical Center – fifty percent – is far below that of its competitors and industry benchmarks. To accompany this, EMC (on average) receives a lower reimbursement for in-patient Medicare services per patient seen in comparison to its competitors. A result such as this is correlated with directly to the fewer amount of specialty services that EMC offers. In order for Emanuel Medical Center to be able to compete with other hospitals in its service area, it is imperative that EMC evaluates what services they currently offer and are capable to offer in the future to add value to the hospital, increase its revenue stream, and expand its patient mix. Currently, Emanuel Medical Center has not succumbed to its increasing financial pressurealthough EMC has had a negative operating income for five straight years. A negative operating income places EMC at a disadvantage because it limits the hospitals ability to renovate its aging building or hire new specialists to offer revenue enhancing procedures. EMC’s competitors, on the other hand, have large sources of revenue due to their mergers with large healthcare networks such as Catholic Healthcare West. Another competitor, Kaiser Permanente Modesto Medical Center, has extremely large financial resources due to the fact

When choosing to update their facility Dr. Maritah and Dr. June spent months researching information on new devices and services that they could provide to their community. They view health reports, statistics, and evaluated what would be most useful and bring in the most revenue for their facility. After review they realized that their community needed more child based care and decided to focus on establishing a pediatric department during their expansion.

In 2004, Riverview Medical Center (RRMC), originally called The Holy Name of Jesus Hospital, was acquired and revamped by the Hospital Management Associates (HMA) and has become a state of art facility with improved efficiencies to ensure high quality care. “RRMC is a 281-licensed bed acute care facility accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, certified for participation in the Medicare Program, and contracted/participated in Blue Cross Plans” (Richards & Slovensky, 2004). The facility is one of the primary employers in the area and provides job opportunities to approximately 700 individuals” (Richards & Slovensky, 2004). RRMC encountered significant challenges against their competitors, Mountain View, Gadsden Regional and HealthSouth. A major challenge was the fact that they were not the sole or primary healthcare provider in the market service area. Secondly, many of RRMC’s key medical staff members and group practices were not in a central location within the vicinity of the hospital. Thirdly, RRMC’s emergency department was in great need of renovation and they lacked in the variety of clinical programs they offered in terms of cancer treatment, neurosurgery, psychiatry, obstetrics, rehabilitation and surgical outpatient care.

Tulsa Memorial Hospital (TMH) is one of the nine acute care hospitals that serves in the general population area. Historically, it has been highly profitable due to its well-appointed facilities, excellent medical staff, good-standing reputation for quality care and its ability to give individual attention for each of its patients. The hospital, in addition to its inpatient services, operates an emergency department and an urgent care center located two miles from the hospital across the street from a major shopping mall.

Merger of Hospital A and B and its consolidation into PRMC was essential as Hospital A was crippled with losses for 3 previous years and was also forecasting losses in the coming year. Hospital B was struggling with an aging facility. Furthermore, given that both the hospitals were in the same community and therefore essentially serving the same community, they were competing both: for the same patients, as well as, the clinical staff. The merger, allowed the new PRMC to reduce the healthcare costs, address the shortage of healthcare personnel and improve the delivery of healthcare by reducing the duplication of services and providing wide variety of services to the small community of 60,000 in southeastern part of Idaho.

Strategic Planning: Due to the current issues, both internally and externally, the organization is facing, Dr. Townsend is challenged to prepare an action plan to implement the proposed strategy needed to restore the organization back to financial health and improve the morale among the physicians and support staff. Another course of planning Dr. Townsend will challenge is the organizations old structure into a way that all patients will be satisfied.

The health care organization covered is Jackson Health System in Miami, Florida. With over 2500 beds, this is one of the largest health systems in Florida and its flagship Jackson Memorial is one of the largest in the country. There are a number of strengths and weaknesses that will characterize the strategic direction that the organization will follow. Among the strengths are that Jackson has a large geographic footprint with Miami-Dade County, it has the financial backing of the county, that it has a diverse workforce, its relationship with medical school at the University of Miami, its leadership, and the multiple clinics and specialized services that it offers.

A SWOT-Analysis is a useful strategic tool for PMH to utilize when determining whether a rural satellite clinic will be a profitable market venture. A SWOT-Analysis is a diagram that considers organizations’ internal competencies (strengths and weaknesses) and external developments (opportunities and threats) affecting the institution (Van Wijngaarden, Scholten, & Van Wijk, 2012). Therefore a SWOT analysis for PMH’s satellite clinic project includes the following strengths: PMH current rural health clinic is successful and provides patients with increased access to outpatient health care services even after business hours and on weekends; offers a patient portal for customers to electronically access their health information; and gives patients access to rotating specialty care services (i.e. podiatry, nephrology, and surgery) (PMH, n.d.). Also, PMH has built strong relationships throughout Pocahontas County that increases public perceptions for their institution and acceptability for the developing of new business ventures (PMH, n.d.). Finally, PMH has an in-house billing center that assists patients with their health care payments and offers a Payment Assistance Program to those patients who have difficulty paying their bills (PMH, n.d.).

The potential of a competing neighboring clinic poses an obstacle in the progress towards achieving DHC's service and profitability objectives. There are also unfavorable demographic shifts out of urban and into suburban areas, which cause a need to adjust the focus of the target market.

Background - The Arnold Palmer Hospital is 1 158-bed paediatric hospital located in Orlando, Florida; part of the Arnold Palmer Medical Foundation and rated as one of the nation's Top paediatric hospitals by U.S. News and World Report. It is the only hospital in all of central Florida with an emergency/trauma center dedicated specifically to pediatric patients. It opened in 1989, and in 2006 became a children's hospital focused solely on