Sample MBA623 Healthcare Management Case Study

MBA623 Healthcare Management Case Study Sample

Your task

Individually, you are required to write a 2000-word analysis based on the annual report provided in MyKBS, under the assessments tab.

Assessment Description

In this assessment, students will be given an opportunity to analyse the environment of healthcare management in Australia and the increasing need to deliver better value to all stakeholders by applying the principles of best practice leadership, team-building and organisational design in a healthcare setting. You will need to demonstrate an understanding of the policy framework and the system dynamics driving change in the healthcare sector and an ability to evaluate the importance of sound financial management for healthcare organisations.

Assessment Instructions

An important skill that a healthcare manager must develop is the ability to analyse a health service or organisation in terms of how well it is meeting its stated mission and objectives. Using the information from the Annual Report that will be provided to you in electronic format, you are to write a formal report that investigates the central organisation in terms of its:

1. Political and policy environment
2. Organisational design and coordination
3. Leadership and teamwork
4. Financial resource utilisation
5. Attitude to, and utilisation of, technology

From your analysis of these elements, you will attempt to identify areas where improvements may be sought. You will justify your arguments for why these improvements should be introduced and present them in the form of detailed recommendations to the Chief Executive and the Board. You will undertake whatever additional research is required to give you a better understanding of the organisation and its activities and any research that is needed for you to formulate your recommendations. This research will form the basis of the Reference List of your report. The primary sources for research should be relevant published academic journals and texts but other sources of information such as newspapers, magazines and reports may also be of value. As stated earlier, the format for this assessment is a formal report. If you have not undertaken a task like this before, your research would also include how to structure and present information in a report format. An Executive Summary is considered to be a key component of a formal report and in this instance is included in the word count for this assessment.

Solution

Political and Policy Environment

The political stability in Australia is quite good, as the organisations operating in different industries including the healthcare sector are provided with proper support and resources to establish the overall healthcare segment in the country. For Assignment Help, The legal acts imposed by the political organisations emphasise on the healthcare development all across the country, and on the grounds of this organisations such as Calvary set up their internal policies integrating them in their SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures). Calvary Health Care Bethlehem continues to adhere with the policies imposed by the government on the basis on competitive neutrality. The organisation revised its healthcare policy of being culturally responsive towards the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community by leading on to a new direction acknowledging the policies of government (Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, 2021). Since 2019 August, an important body of work has been initiated and carried out in order to screen for the cognition alterations alongside the delirium on the ward. The execution was directed by a new policy alongside a program of education and learning. The ongoing screening education for the new medical workers has been integrated in their orientation program and the results concerning the same are presented regularly during the meeting with medical staffs (Dixit and Sambasivan, 2018). Apart from this, the significant accounting policies of the organisation comprise of taxation policy, goods and services tax, income recognition, and revenue recognition policy. All these policies are accounted when preparing the financial report. Out of these, the key changes in company’s accounting policy relates to the timing of the revenue recognition from applying the AASB 15 under different streams of revenue. The auditing group evaluate the appropriateness of the all these policies used by the organisation alongside its reasonableness comprising of the accounting projections, as well as related disclosures made the board of directors (Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, 2021). However, there are certain policies concerning the welfare of the public that are not adopted as of now, but might turn out to be an essential policy in the future.

Organisational Design and Coordination

In an organisation such a Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, it is of paramount importance to have a proper strategy in place concerning organisational design and coordination. The efficient functioning of a health service is influenced by the organisational structures alongside the coordination. The organisation structure of Calvary Health Care Bethlehem comprises of arrangements including responsibilities, authority, information and knowledge sharing, and result. The organisational design of Calvary Health Care Bethlehem is a formal and directed process used for incorporating people, technologies, and information (Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, 2021). This serves as a key structural component, which makes it feasible for the organisation in maximising the value through aligning their hierarchical design with the overall vision and mission of the company. In a healthcare setup such as Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, the importance of coordination among the different departments needs to be quite high and effective, as it is directly related to the outcome of a patient. It is of utmost importance for the healthcare managers to ensure smooth and hassle-free coordination in order to reap fruitful results by providing a thorough treatment to their patients.

At the micro-level of Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, medical professionals are grouped together in order to work in units having a mutual supervisor. The structure of any organisation is quite complex by nature, and there is a high possibility of problems taking place every now and then accompanying the company benefits indirectly (Sandhu, 2019). Every company design has certain dysfunctional as well as functional characteristics. As per the structural contingency theory, it is of importance to consider the complex trade-offs within the design of organisation. Integration and differentiation are two vital components in this case. Integration includes the coordination of activities between the healthcare units, comprising of conflict management resulting in better patient outcomes (Heath et al., 2017). On the other hand, in differentiation every part of the company is managed in order to meet a specific need of speciality work in the healthcare setup. From the application of this theory in Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, it can be stated that the organisation somewhat adopts and follows a hybrid approach to carry out their operations. Although it is of extreme importance for Calvary Health Care Bethlehem to have their total focus on better patient outcomes, which they do, but in certain instances, the organisation also needs to use the differentiation approach in order to meet a specific need of a specific group of patients (Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, 2021).
At the macro-level of Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, there is a significant interdependence accounting for interconnectedness of work, task uncertainty, size, sharing of resources, and so on. Thus, the organisation needs to have a structural approach in place for ensuring a smooth coordination concerning the hierarchy, procedures and rules, planning and objective setting, lateral relations, and vertical information system. In this context, the organisation makes use of a program organisation design. In this design, the organisation standardises the work processes by using rules, regulations, plans, schedules, policies, procedures, and protocols. This design also allows the organisation in standardisation of skills with specification of skills or training needed to carry out the work, as well as standardisation of output by specifying the form of intermediate outcomes of work (Ali et al., 2017).

Leadership and Teamwork

Leadership is a vital aspect for any organisation operating in any industry. In this context, leaders entail the frontline managers directly supervising the care providers, middle managers accountable for their respective departments, and the top managers such as CEO for managing the entire organisation (Fletcher et al., 2019). The leaders of Calvary Health Care Bethlehemfocus of strategic way of solving issues by incorporating strategic function in their leadership constituting of objectives with subsequent action for achieving the same. As known, the internal system of any healthcare organisation involves numerous complexities giving rise of problems. The 8-step strategic problem-solving process can be used, as it provides an integrated perspective towards a problem resolution, and can provide fruitful results. Besides this, the leaders of Calvary Health Care Bethlehem adopt a transformational leadership skill, as for implementing a certain change needs clinical and administrative leadership (Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, 2021). Alongside this, sustaining the leadership in Calvary Health Care Bethlehem is also quite effective, as they have a proper strategy in place for succession planning and self-care. The members of Calvary Health Care Bethlehem are highly motivated for the upcoming initiatives being brought to the table for development of better care for the patients. Furthermore, the members with managerial roles in the organisation are clinical with communication, as for making a team to get a job done efficiently it is imperative. It is often seen that due to lack of communication between the speciality groups led to unfortunate outcomes for the patient.

Moreover, teamwork is another essential component in Calvary Health Care Bethlehem led by leaders will excellent leadership skills. The teams and units working with each other provided with a defined purpose, composition, structure, and specific processes. The teams work as a formal group within the organisation, which is task-oriented with a specific purpose. The teams operate staying in the organisational context and interact with organisational sub units to ensure proper medication of the patients. The work teams of the organisation collaborate for providing a specific service, the support teams provide support for the primary functions, the parallel teams include individuals serving within the work teams also play a vital role in assisting, the project teams produce one-time outputs, and management teams provide the overall direction having a purpose (Sfantou et al., 2017). All these departments conducting a set of activities hold a value for the stakeholders including themselves, as well as the patients, their family, other associated medical firms, and so on.

Financial Resource Utilisation

The Australian government spent an amount of 185 AUD on the health services and goods during 2017-2018 (Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, 2021). However, the real financial problem existing is that the mix of funding alongside the responsibility of the service delivery amid the state or territory governments and the commonwealth. This discrepancy has led to shifting of costs and gross inefficiencies, alongside poor service integration. As per the financial reports of Calvary Health Care Bethlehem, it can be said that the organisation has a well-managed flow of financial resources with apt use for treating their patients with utmost care and medication (Edney et al., 2018). The rise of globalisation has influenced the overall healthcare sector due to which the organisation was required to make use of their financial resources not only for people of Australia, but also tying up with healthcare institutions in other countries to create a positive relation, which can pay off during the need of the moment. Besides, it has been identified that some of the medical expenses this company receives from funding from the Victorian department of health due to its name in the denominational hospital list. It is a great help in managing both time and financial resources.

Attitude To and Utilisation of Technology

Calvary Health Care Bethlehem each year works on interdisciplinary teams for collaborating them for developing the assistive technology resources for improving patient quality of life. Current important updates involve developing modified eye gazing systems, interaction processes as well as environmental management teams for patients’ wheelchairs. New planning devices have additionally brought to enable patients for driving wheelchairs along with management of other devices through a single change during hand movements are impaired. Change management options have developed patients’ skills for using mainstream technologies like iPADS, mobile phones, and tables. Permission to these devices on wheelchairs permitted effective selections and management over how they interact, move and work relaxingly (Poojitha, 2018).

The Vitro application has been applied in Calvary Health Care Bethlehem in 6 months end-to-end offering the healthcare company with an entirely paperless process in which all medical information was being stored electronically. This project unit that involved all medical employees from both the Calvary Health Care Bethlehem team and Vitro group have worked collaboratively for identifying as well as reviewing the present paper forms of that total 197. At the time of reviewing procedure this became evident that streamlining as well as effectiveness can be made, the opportunities was taken to evaluate the needs of Calvary Health Care Bethlehem that outcomes in the minimization to 67 forms that would be converted in Vitro applications.

Recommendations for Improvements

Focus on better technologies should be one of the current solutions for Calvary Health Care Bethlehem as well as overall healthcare industry in 2021. Applying the online data as well as modern interaction tools efficiently will be needed for the future of the care unit in Calvary Health Care Bethlehem. Technology will act as a role in around each area of health, involving health record keeping. It can be said that developing an online health recording process in Calvary Health Care Bethlehem similar to My Heath Record. Having this type of portal and record keeping app will help the company in providing and accessing major health data of all the patients (both old and new) involving any past allergies, health conditions as well as treatments, medicine history along with scanning reports can be evaluated by one system in the entire Calvary Health Care Bethlehem. On the other hand, it can be said that this type of change in the company will also help the medical practitioners, doctors, health care workers in this company working in remote, regional areas. Online technology will ensure this probable for the medical care workers and doctors in Calvary Health Care Bethlehem to have video appointments with all the patients who cannot visit to the centres or Calvary Health Care Bethlehem hospital for appointment with experts. This type of solution is particularly relevant and impact in the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Reference List