Investigating a New Hospital Management System

Richard Veller, the new CFO for Union Medical Center, began to change the operations of their management. Richard Veller looked to change UMC to an industrial system, which meant that the hospital would view cases as products. Just like any ordinary business, these products would have cost objects and would require an accounting system. In order to allocate costs appropriately, UMC was required to organize their cases into Diagnosis Related Groups to create a functional management control system. These changes brought certain internal issues into the spotlight. If solutions are not found, the hospital will not be able to implement their plans.

Finally, if any end-user customers were to adopt the activity-based pricing (ABP) system proposed by O&M, O&M could help hospitals better understand their costs and analyze their processes. This would improve efficiency and reduce waste due to loss, theft and expiration of sensitive medical supplies. O&M would reduce its costs by delivering only what is needed, and the hospitals would be buying fewer unutilized supplies.

After reading the case study it seems that one problem between the hospitals and upper management seems to be lack of communication. It seems that Singh and Mrs. Manzoni have not affectively communicated to the hospital administrators what the goals of the company are and what is best for the company. I believe that Mrs. Singh and the hospital administrators value the importance of two different things. Mrs. Singh values the importance of correct data entry into the firm’s management information system. While, the hospital administrators seem to be placing more value on the importance of patient services. In addition, it seems Mrs. Singh does not know what

In order to eliminate the inefficiencies witnessed in many public and private hospitals that serve a number of patients, an integrated approach to handling the daily workload is necessary. There is need for all departments within the hospital to work closely together in ensuring more effective and efficient service deliveries. In this paper, a planned change is going to be carried out involving designing a new system that incorporates all the departments within the hospital. This includes the surgery department, pediatrics department, dentistry department, nursing department, pharmacy departments, laboratory and testing department, X-ray and Physiotherapy departments, Equipment maintenance and Engineering department, Information Technology

The healthcare industry consists of many strengths and weaknesses during the improvement of patient safety, efficient operations, reduction of medical errors, and ensuring that they provide timely access to all patient information. This will have to still comply with all legal guidelines as they control costs and protect patient privacy. The adoption of advanced information technology is a popular strategy being used in the healthcare industry because it allows their weaknesses to be progressively diminished as they gain and use the opportunities necessary as an analytical tool. This would allow their capabilities to be further developed with the new technologies and processes used as they unify the adoption of IT standards. In order to stay competitive within the healthcare industry, then there must be specific actions and measures that must be taken to ensure a positive outcome. This includes external opportunities to increase the capability of the IT infrastructure in a national environment as the growth of industry standards are met in order to decrease the pressured threats of legal compliance through patient trust and the high cost of IT. The growing recognition of strategic leadership often leads to both improved financial stability and contact accessibility of the system. Some challenges that may occur within the healthcare system may cause issues in a hospital setting because of the centralized society of an organization. This is because of the different visions and

In the healthcare industry, services provided by the healthcare staff are converted mainly by the inputs such as: Doctors, nurses, hospitals, medical supplies, equipment and laboratories. The processing involved in the healthcare industry includes: examination, surgery, monitoring, medication, and therapy. The output of the mentioned process would of course be healthy patients (Operations Management, 2004, p.6). Healthcare workers have a higher degree of customer contacts, for the customers are our patients that we provide comprehensive care to. Services, such as providing healthcare have a variable amount of inputs for a specific case. For instance, a critical care patient may need several nurses that need to attend to all of the needs for that patients, whereas, a telemetry patient may only need one nurse to provide care for. The measurement of productivity in healthcare services is also more difficult than the manufacturing of goods. In healthcare, it is rather difficult to measure the productivity of healthcare providers because healthcare is not quantitative. Less inventory is needed on hand in providing services (Operations Management, 2004, p.6 & 7). The scope of operations management in healthcare requires several different activities performed. Forecasting in healthcare may include ordering sufficient amounts of flu vaccines half a year ahead of time

To improve the performance, there need to be upgrades with the systems that the hospital uses to keep track of the patients information. I recommend using Epic as a tool to help keep all of the patient’s information confidential and easy to access with a click of a button. This will allow for every department to have access to a certain patient’s file whether to be from a doctor entering notes about the patient’s visit, to health insurance billing department making sure that copays and such are being paid and their accounts are kept up-to-date. The hospital governance plays an important role because of the need for funds to help keep the hospital. By providing more outside events to raise money for the hospital will be a great start to being able to fully provide for each patient that comes through Middlefield Hospital doors.

To add to the dilemma, the rising cost of healthcare will not adequately be addressed by any new healthcare system. The costs of healthcare in America are staggering and currently represent over 17% of our national GDP with the expectation of that number rising to 20% in less than 5 years. These costs are direct hits on the revenues received by hospital which affect their ability to remain operational. As the hospital’s revenues and profit margin decrease, so does the expected longevity of the hospital.

Implication of this shift for hospitals is very important because hospitals inpatient have decreased. Hospitals are losing more money due to the growth of ambulatory care facilities. Ambulatory care facilities can affect hospital fiscal health by attracting many profitable services away from the hospitals. Consumers are saving more money because they can get good quality of care for less money and less hospital stay than hospitals. This can impact health care delivery system because they will be more competition between those ambulatory care facilities and hospitals.

To say that hospital costs are rising at fast pace is an understatement. According to the article, gross domestic product spent on health care in the United States has grown from 5.3% in 1960 to more than 18%. With healthcare costs on the rise, I think it is important to accurately account for the costs. With the newly regulated and highly sophisticated electronic medical record (EMR) system it allows access to large amount of data that compare costs better than before. Due to EMR systems Physicians no longer chart on paper but on laptops and tablets.

Healthcare management is a great, complex, and dynamic field. Like any business, healthcare requires exceptional administration to keeps its operations effective and smooth. Notably, the healthcare field is constantly growing, calling for the expertise of skilled administrators with the capacity to manage hospitals. Since my childhood, I have enjoyed solving problems, helping people, caring about the community and individuals, and having an excellent compensation and growth opportunities.

Establishment of reduce wait times as a culture in the hospital involves implementation of staffing policies among others that would reduce the wait time. Automated systems can be used to reduce time spent in the registration process. The disadvantage of this strategy is that it is costly and requires high initial capital to implement. Incorporation of preferences of the patients requires the health administrators to determine the issues that affect the patients hence increased waiting time. A system can be established to enable the cardiac care patients make appointments when faced with issues that are less critical in order to reduce wait time. However, this strategy will require the community hospital to incur additional costs during the registration process. Revamping the process of front-line scheduling enables the personnel of the community hospital to adhere to demand and supply when scheduling treatment procedures which are not life threatening. This will reduce the number of emergency cases. The negative force of this strategy is that it will make most patients to prefer hospitals which do not revamp its front-line schedules (Sullivan,

Wow Hospital (WH) managers also called healthcare executives or healthcare administrators, plan, direct, analysis and coordinate medical and health services. They might manage an entire facility or specialize in managing a specific clinical area or department, or manage a medical practice for a group of physicians. Medical and health services managers must be able to adapt to changes in healthcare laws, regulations, and technology.

It is there for imperative to have separate specialist for general administrative and human resource functions in hospitals. Secondly with the tremendous expansion in health service it has become essential to have specialists or experts not only in two fields but also in other fields of hospital administration so the maximum efficiency can be achieved at the maximum cost. Hence the need for better planning, organizing, staffing, & coordinating hospitals can overemphasized. Hospitals administration can no longer be left to change in the hands of a person who is “jack- of all traders and master of –

Explain how the use of computerized management systems to record administrative data can increase quality of care in a given situation.