Fundamentals of Strategic Planning for Healthcare Organizations, Essay Example

I will examine the merger of a primary health care facility and a general hospital in the Province of West Finland. Further, let’s examine staff attitudes towards the merger. Questionnaires were presented to nearly 70% of employees.  The majority of employees were ready to carry through with the merger but they were somewhat unclear of what to expect after the merger. Some of the issues that arose were developing strategies that maximize the expected benefit. Communication issues came up as well as governance issues.  Threshold issues should be developed and examined very early on. [1](“US National Library of Medicine”, 2009)

“Autonomy and managerial control are not given away lightly making the merger process even more difficult.” (Williamson S., Stevens, R. & Loudon D., 1996).  Differences of personalities can be so entrenched it often causes a merger to fail or decline in efficiency. Alliances provide a means for maintaining organizational viability for a fast-changing health care environment. Budgeting must be tied to performance and performance is measured against objectives. An overall ‘strategic’ plan rather than ‘jump in and does everything all at once plan’ will work best for mergers. [2](Williamson S., Stevens, R. & Loudon D., 1996).

An organization’s capacity is the organization’s ability to initiate, maintain and enhance its set of adaptive strategy programs. Ranking and setting priorities is essential when two healthcare companies are joining. “Managers and employees must understand which programs are most important, which should be provided incremental funding and which should be the first to be scaled back if funding is reduced or eliminated.” [3](Ginter P., Swayne L., & Duncan W., 2002).

References

US National Library of Medicine (2009) Key issues in mergers and acquisitions. Healthcare organizations must approach collaborations with caution. Retrieved September 3, 2009 from, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10110574

Williamson S., Stevens, R. & Loudon D., 1996 Fundamentals of strategic planning for healthcare organizations Retrieved September 3, 2007 from, http://books.google.com/books?id=3L92WBRIobEC&dq=healthcare+organization+mergers&source=gbs_navlinks_s