Consulting for the Caring Angel Hospital

Consulting for the Caring Angel Hospital
Imagine that you are a senior consultant at Practical Health Care Consulting firm. Your supervisor has instructed you to spend three (3) months at the Caring Angel Hospital to help improve the quality of care, add value to the organization, improve employee morale, design an efficient organizational chart, create a strong team environment, and create the hospital’s competitive advantage. The hospital has traditionally made losses year after year. Furthermore, it is not performing well financially, and the banks are not willing to lend it large sums of money for more effective marketing.

After spending two (2) months within the hospital, you are very happy with your progress, and you think you are capable of acquiring more patient base and expanding the hospital market. However, with a closer look, you notice that your patients are still hopping from one specialized hospital to another in search of various specialized treatments. You also notice that the seats are not comfortable in the waiting area, and the patients continuously show up for appointments on the wrong dates. The nurses and the employees are not smiling during patient conversations, and everyone looks for ways to blame others for failures in the patient treatment process. Everyone seems to work alone and hide what they do from their colleagues.

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At the end of the three (3) month period, you must provide a report with your recommended strategies designed to help Caring Angel Hospital achieve its goals.

Note: You may create and / or make all necessary assumptions needed for the completion of this assignment. (You will not need to – use what’s provided)

Write a four to six (4-6) page paper. Do not exceed this page limit! (The title and reference pages do not count, but you must use a 1” margin on all sides of the document. I will stop reading at the 6th page of text! Nothing written after that will be considered in your grade!

There should be nine parts to your paper. I have provided detailed instructions for each section below.

Two things to keep in mind: 1) the hospital has limited funds. They do have some money to address deficient areas but other than those, they have little to invest. 2) you are a consultant. To make it easier, imagine you are providing recommendations to the hospital’s board of directors. You will want to maintain an appropriate tone in your paper (not too casual but no “academic-speak”) and all of your recommendations need to be accompanied by the benefits they will yield, as well as the evidence (research) proving those benefits can be reasonably expected. These are well-educated, professional, and busy men and women!! Be thorough but succinct and remember they are paying for your analysis of the situation and recommendations, not your opinions on what patients like.

Content
I. Introduction (Do NOT include a heading with this label.)

It is not necessary to restate the assignment. Instead, categorize the major issues (e.g., Implementation of the following recommendations will advance the hospital’s goals of adding value and improving the quality of care, morale, communication, and teamwork, while maintaining the current budget for these improvements.

A. Improve the quality of care

Chapter 3 in your textbook offers multiple methods that can be used to improve quality of care. You will find specific information that will be helpful under the sections titled “Programming Approaches to Coordination,” “Feedback Approaches to Coordination,” and “Relational Coordination.” An excellent article that will provide you with more detail on specific options within these categories can be found on the Commonwealth Fund’s website. It’s titled, Hospital Quality Improvement: Strategies and Lessons from US Hospitals, published by The Commonwealth Fund (they are not the author though)! http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2007/apr/hospital-quality-improvement–strategies-and-lessons-from-u-s–hospitals

Don’t forget to stick to the “facts”! As the consultant, you are not writing about what you think or what you predict the patients’ or staffs’ feelings or opinions will be based on what you expect or how you would react. Instead, provide research that has proven what the outcomes are likely to be.

Incorrect: “Implementing quality measures will make sure patients don’t worry about doctors and nurses making a mistake that will kill them or make them sicker.”

Correct: Implementing a feedback approach to quality improvement has been shown to significantly reduce hospital errors (Burns, 2012).

B. Add value to the organization.
Chapter 2 discusses adding value to a healthcare organization. It lists lots of suggestions. Keep in mind that adding value to a hospital is not the same thing as “value-added services.” Value-added services are additional services or products provided to patients as a complement to core services. The patient can recognize the hospital is going above and beyond and that will distinguish them amongst their competitors. Adding value to a hospital are things that result in higher quality care with increased efficiencies. The up-front costs may be high but they will recoup that investment over time via better quality care. These include training, technology upgrades, public area “makeovers” (remember those uncomfortable chairs).
C. Improve employee morale
All of chapter 4 is devoted to employee motivation, which is strongly linked to morale. This is the first place you should start when seeking to improve morale. Read “Myths About Motivation —And Some Antidotes.” Do NOT suggest a monetary bonus or reward system or any type of pay raise as a way to improve morale! I’m not suggesting that doing so won’t have an impact on some, but 1) it won’t motivate enough employees to change morale and 2) the hospital is in a budget crunch. More importantly, as the book points out, even though it is the first thing people think of when they hear “low morale or motivation,” it is not typically effective. You usually end up simply paying more for the employee that is unenthusiastic about their job. Ultimately, from reading the first half of the chapter, you should take away that motivating employees is highly individualized and people are generally motivated to get specific needs met (read “Needs Theory – before Maslow’s Hierarchy in the textbook). Thus, the managers will need to determine what motivates their individual employees and what their needs are (this should be the first step listed, with a method included). There are three types of individual situations or positions that may affect the motivation of each employee. Managers need to know what these are. If you want to specify how to motivate nurses vs. doctors vs. support staff, information on some “blanket” motivational methods that apply to healthcare is listed in “How to Motivate Healthcare Professionals.” To find out what managers should DO to motivate their employees, read the section called, “Potential Solutions.” Before finishing this portion, review the Managerial Guidelines and the Case Study, “Staff Motivation at Sharp Healthcare.” Some ideas to tie this into morale can be found at http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20130713/MAGAZINE/307139972
and https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/performance-management/reference-materials/more-topics/accountability-can-have-positive-results/

(Make sure you include the staff not smiling at the patients when making this recommendation to the board.)
D. Design an efficient organizational chart
This can be based off of one of the charts in Chapter 3 in your textbook. Justify your choice of organizational structure, focusing on why it is the most efficient model. As the consultant, you will simply be proposing that the organization alter their structure as outlined in the chart you provide (the chart may be a figure at the end of the paper and it will not count within your page limit).

E. Create a strong team environment
Everything you need to write about here can be found in Chapter 5 of the textbook, beginning with “A Model of Team Effectiveness.” It is important to note that in the paragraph that begins with “Figure 1,” the authors make it clear that much of what they go on to discuss is within the managers’ control. Thus, your recommendations should be focused on “what actions the managers at the hospital take.”
F. Create a competitive edge
You will find the term “competitive advantage” throughout Chapter 10. An organization has many, many options to establish and maintain their competitive advantage. Doing so, always starts with strategic planning, however. Read ALL of Chapter 10 and take notes as you go along, especially everywhere the term “competitive advantage” Feel free to use other resources to augment your research.

II. Recommend one approach that the hospital could use to acquire a larger market share, given the prevailing financial circumstances. Justify your response.
All of Chapter 11 discusses strategic alliances, the most effective way to garner more market share. This is the most viable approach for Caring Angel Hospital to take to improve their market share since they do not have the funds to increase their service line or improve their branding.

III. Investigate at least two (2) value-added services that Caring Angel Hospital could offer to strengthen its value proposition. Provide at least two (2) examples of the advantages of these value-added services to the hospital.
Adding value is discussed in Chapter 1. However, Value-Added Services (VAS) are different. Value-added services are actual services (or products) that complement core hospital services.They are not technology upgrades or staff training (which are used to “add value” as discussed in the first section of your paper), but rather they are additional features that patients can enjoy. There are many ideas presented in the article, Value-Added Services in Hospitals, at http://www.medicalbuyer.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=691
Make sure the examples you use include proven advantages, not just what you think is better about those services. For example, if you list birthing rooms as one of your VASs, your example of the advantage would not be “mothers enjoy having private time with their babies,” but rather “research has shown that mothers who deliver in birthing suites have fewer medical interventions, resulting in better outcomes for both the mothers and the babies” (Rajiv Pathni, Kumar, & Kant, 2008). This reference is older than I’d like but it is actually the best source I could find that listed various great solutions.
WRITING INSTRUCTIONS
Use five (5) RECENT (within the last five [5] years) quality academic resources in this assignment.

Note: Wikipedia and other websites where anyone can write anything (blogs or any social media) do not qualify as quality academic resources.

Everything you need to write this paper can be found in your textbook. However, you are being asked to supplement that material with outside resources. The easiest way to do that is to read all the pages that are relevant to the things required in the paper, and any that you don’t fully understand, or you would like to write more about, look them up, using Google, Google Scholar, or the library databases. You can also refer to the original source that is cited in your text, but if you do that, you must actually find the source online or in a library and read it for yourself. You cannot just cite a source that is cited in the book without reading the source first. If you find it online, you must provide the URL (or the DOI) so I can check it. If you do not provide the URL, I will definitely check it (by running a search). If you fail to list the URL, and I find the article online, that article will not be counted toward your five required authors. You must include the URL for any source you did not physically hold in your hand.

Please note that to earn full points for your references in the grading rubric, you must use at least FIVE references. Using the minimum of FOUR will only place you in the “Proficient” category.

Formatting – Use this as a checklist!
• double spaced – there should not be ANY extra spaces anywhere outside of the double-spacing.
• Times New Roman, font (size 12)
• one-inch margins on all sides
• formatted in APA style (include a running head, page numbers, and if possible, headings)
• citations and references must be formatted in APA style (FYI: Websites can never be in the author position in a reference nor can they be in an in-text citation; the name (not the URL) of the webpage is not listed in the reference.) If you are citing a source with no author, simply put the title in the author position, followed by the date, and then “Retrieved from http://xxxxx.”
• an in-text citation for a source without an author should like this: (“Title Title,” date) – Note only the first two words of the title are used (in title case).
• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.
• running head on top left with page number on top right. Proper format:
Page 1 should be: Running Head: CARING ANGELS HOSPITAL 1
Page 2 on should be: CARING ANGELS HOSPITAL 2
(title can be something else but it needs to be a shorter version of the actual title.

REVIEW THE RUBRIC BEFORE YOU BEGIN WRITING!

*Websites that are appropriate are journal articles, government websites, websites of credible sources (e.g., news agencies, foundations, or reputable organizations). Sources that are not appropriate are blogs, anything ending in “pedia,” anything with advertisements on it, biased sites with an agenda, discussion forums, sites for places few people have heard of.