How Hospital Management Affects Patient Care
Before we discuss how hospital management affects patient care, we need to ask who, and what is involved in hospital management? Hospital management is often managed by the administration members who make policies, oversee patient care, budget, and lead marketing efforts to ensure their organization functions smoothly. They are also in charge of suggesting new strategies, such as professional medical websites.
Whatever the manager is doing will have a great influence on the quality and safety in processes, performance, and patient outcomes.
The following aspects are affected by hospital management:
Attitude
In an organizational setting, people are likely to look at what the manager is doing and what the organizational culture is like. Physicians and doctors from different hospitals will tackle problems or even patients differently. This means they have invisible values and beliefs influencing them.
For instance, if one’s organizational culture values trust, then it will do everything to make sure the patient is satisfied. In that case, we can say that they value the validation of the customer. On the other hand, if another’s organizational culture values being friendly, then conversations tend to be loose and open. There might not be a fine line between the office and outside the office.
In that case, those two values create different worlds. Same patients, different treatments. The kind of attitude offered by someone who ranks trust and one who ranks friendliness is different.
Relationship between a patient and insurer
This is a very touchy topic and needs to be addressed with care by managers. It can be havoc when patients have recovered but their insurance company is being uncooperative. It is stressful for the patient and can be detrimental to the speed of their recovery, especially when they have a cover. If that’s the case, then it means that hospital managers will have to step up.
They will need to show up and solve the matter before it snowballs into a big issue. They should communicate with their patients about the needs and wants of the ongoing care and train their on-floor staff to do so. This should be done before any health procedure proceeds. This prevents any kind of hiccup that was discussed above. Managers must find ways to negotiate insurance deals that favor their clients.
All those are difficult positions to be in, because of the presence of insurance adjusters, but any manager who masters this aspect becomes an irreplaceable asset to the patient’s health care and the hospital’s financial position.
Outcomes
We are talking about the result. What is coming out of the processes, strategies, and philosophies approved by the health managers? It’s what’s on the scoreboard that matters, not how much work you put in. In the health production line, we are looking for a better patient outcome to generate profits.
For this to be possible, we can use a three-stepwise measuring stick: a goal, a plan, and progress towards that goal. The goal is where the patient wants to be health-wise, the plan shows the strategies and philosophies taken to achieve that goal, and the last one has placed sticks of progress to reach a particular goal.