Stratus Healthcare Alliance Strategy Detailed, Coursework Example

Strategic management is defined as the planning and implementation of the major goals of an organization. These actions must be performed while considering the resources that are available in terms of supplies and the workforce (Hill et al., 2008). The essential steps in the strategic management process include goal-setting, analysis, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and evaluation and control. Ideal managers need to be sufficiently educated to set goals that are aligned with the aims of the organization. To do so, strategic plans are utilized to set these goals based on existing company data. This involves an analysis of existing trends in addition to a modification of prior practices to determine if an intervention can reasonably enhance business practices.

The individuals that should be involved in the strategic management plan include the management team at the upper level in addition to lower level managers in their employees. It is important to assess the strategic plan in a manner that defines the role of each individual in an organization. This involves an establishment of hierarchy so that there is an enhanced understanding of which manager is responsible for which group of employees. Doing so allows the responsibilities of managers to shift in a manner that is conducive to achieving the most progress, as each manager has his or her own specialty, and this specialized knowledge will allow work to be performed more quickly.

Mission statements serve as a general guide for the day-to-day operations of an organization and are therefore useful in assisting strategic planning and decision making needs. It is essential to ensure that these statements include a focus on satisfying consumer needs, they need to be based on the core competencies of the company, and they must motivate employee commitment. Furthermore, the mission statement needs to provide realistic and clear promises, it needs to be focused, short, and memorable, be clearly understood, and state information that helps the company brand itself. It is important for the mission statement to be well-written and reflect these principles because this message represents the essence of a company, and can therefore impact its ability to conduct business either positively or negatively.

The goal of the vision statement is to reflect the strategic plan. As such, the key elements that it contains helps to promote an understanding of these goals. It is important to stress the long-term goal that the current strategic management plan intends to achieve. It is likely that organization as a whole aims to advance itself, and it is therefore important to keep this long-term goal in constant sight. In addition it is important for the vision statement to build upon the history and prior accomplishments of an institution in order to demonstrate the ability of the company to achieve its newest goals. It is also essential to ensure that the plan is motivating, inspiring, and purpose-driven so that those who read it agree both agree with the vision and agree that it is achievable.

The purpose of the value statement is to inform customers about the firm’s top priorities in addition to what its core beliefs are. This information needs to be provided in detail so that the organization could best determine how to identify and connect with targeted customers. In addition, this detail reminds employees about the actions that they should be taking in order to accomplish consumer goals.

This SWOT analysis will be based on an institution named Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, NY. The organization is one of the largest health care organizations in the area and employees a majority of the population in the region as well.

Strengths: The characteristics of this business that allows it to have an advantage over others is that it is spread across the Bronx. Thus, it has formed a network of many different institutions that allow the facilities to specialize in different types of medicine. As a consequence, it has a large patient base and patients are referred from one facility to another on a regular basis, ensuring that patients are kept within the system. Furthermore, the system has effectively established hierarchy in a manner that allows the institution to save money by allowing the leadership team to manage all of the hospitals.

Weaknesses: The established hierarchy allows the hospital to save money, but this places a lot of responsibility on the management. In addition, the facility serves a large patient population and needs to carefully consider how to organize its facilities to ensure that all patients can been seen in a reasonable timeframe.

Opportunities: The organization would benefit by adding members onto its management team in order to provide members with specific leadership responsibilities. This will allow more people to share a great amount of responsibilities to ensure that they will be performed effectively.

Threats: Montefiore Medical Center’s main competition is Mount Sinai Medical Center, which is located in Manhattan. It is possible for some of Montefiore’s clients to travel to this health center because even though Montefiore is more widespread, Mount Sinai has a better reputation. Therefore, the organization needs to brand itself in a manner that allows it to remain competitive with well-known medical centers.

When I think of successful health care organizations, I think of institutions that are able to quickly see a large capacity of patients because they are able to maximize their resources and manpower in a way that allows their goals to be accomplished. Ultimately, these institutions are organized because they implement effective strategic management plans that allow both the management team and the workers to gain an understanding of both long-term and short-term goals. Unsuccessful health care organizations are unable to achieve greatness due to their inability to be organized at a variety of levels. When attempting to resolve this issue, the first place that ineffective organizations should look is their budget. An unorganized budget will prevent the institution from being able to determine how to best use its financial resources. After this point, it should reestablish its strategic plan to ensure that all members of the institution are working towards shared goals effectively.

There are many advantages and disadvantages of forming alliances in health care. Some advantages associated with forming alliances is that help all members develop new ways of conducting business. These partnerships allow the formation of new ideas and integration of old ideas in a manner that helps enhance business. In addition, it allows institutions to act independently while providing one another with support. However, it is possible that these alliances distract organizations from their independent goals by instead focusing on collaborations. In addition, while there are benefits of participating in these partnerships, they are often more exaggerated on paper than they are in reality. Difficulties can be facilitated by ineffective committee governance and it occasionally makes it challenging for each organization to address their individual needs.

Ultimately, the cons appear to be greater than the pros because it appears that health care alliances make the strategic management plan more challenging for the individual organization. When hospitals collaborate, there are some benefits, but these collaborations often detract from resources that the individual hospital can utilize in order to further develop itself. It is more reasonable to achieve organizational goals if there is a specific focus and all operations are performed in a manner that helps achieve this purpose. Data has shown that alliances are beneficial in other market sectors, but these advantages are less in the health care setting.

As of 2013, major health care facilities in the state of Georgia have announced their intention to participate in an alliance. The system will be called Stratus Healthcare and includes 1500 physicians across 23 hospitals. One of the main aims of this alliance is to pool financial and physical resources together so that all institutions are able to accomplish their goals (Stratus Healthcare, 2013). However, since the focus on this alliance treats the hospitals as a unit rather than different institutions with individual needs, it is important to consider that these partnerships may detract from institutional goals.

This health care alliance formed as a consequence of the changing federal health care laws. The main aim of this collaboration is to implement a fee-for-value framework in place of the fee-for-service model that had been used in the past. Additional goals for the alliance is to improve patient quality of care and safety. This alliance is not likely to endure because it would be more beneficial for each organization to set their own quality of care and safety based on their individual data. Health care organizations that are members of an alliance will instead focus on these goals as a network, which will be beneficial to improving the state of care in Georgia as a whole, but leaves room for the standards of each organization to not provide maximal benefit on a local level. In addition, while the alliance members believe they will save money by entering into this collaboration this will not necessary be true. It is important for the alliance to track its financial records to ensure that this will be the case and that this venture is not adding extra expenses instead.

The health care industry is heavily regulated to ensure the protection of patients. This is necessary because the industry operates as a business, and it is important for regulations to be in place for the administration and the staff to work counter to business principles, which is needed to ensure that the needs of all patients are being met. In the business world, it is more acceptable to have lower standards and to occasionally not provide consumer satisfaction. In the health care industry, failure to adhere to these principles can result in lost lives. Therefore, it is important to protect the safety and health of patients and promote means by which practice could be continually improved.

There are many laws that regulate the health care industry. One of the most significant is referred to as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which provides for patient safety by protecting data transfer (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.). This impacts health care organizations because it requires members the industry to take care to ensure that its provisions are enforced, which can involve implementation of training programs and other measures that are costly. However, it is important for the health care organization to ensure that these regulations are enforced in order to avoid governmental fines and to uphold its reputation.

Recently, the ratification of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has meant that health care organizations have needed to update their operations and gain a greater understanding of new policies in addition to how to effectively provide services to their patients with state insurance plans. This program was primarily meant to benefit the American people who were not previously provided with health benefits by their employers. Health care organizations must conform to this law by ensuring that the staff could be trained in a manner that provides support for patients that are new to health care or to help individuals find a plan that will cover their inpatient or outpatient services.

It is also essential for health care organizations to be aware of any accreditation standards, in addition to state and federal laws that work to modify their practice. A majority of these regulations are in place to ensure that each health care organization is meeting minimum standards in treating patients in addition to providing them with an understanding of consequences if these goals are not met.

Ultimately, the laws and regulations that are in place benefit both the patient and the health care organization because it helps establish the role of each in the patient/health care professional relationship. They provide health care managers with the means necessary to determine what changes need to be made within their organization in addition to providing them with an adequate understanding of how changes can be altered in order to make practices more effective. In the same manner, these laws help establish patient safety, as it allows a patient to be certain that the hospital is working to determine how to best help each patient on an organizational and clinical level.

In David’s memorandum to the CEO’s about the joint venture, it is important for David to consider that legally, the surgeons cannot finance 35% of the funds through bank loan. While the division of financial responsibility appears to be fair at first glance, it is important to consider the legal rights that health care organizations have that make their finances operate similarly to non-for-profit organizations. Due to these operations, the finances provided by the hospital will be able to pay taxes on the investment accordingly, by the surgeons would be required to pay these taxes out of pocket. As a consequence, this aspect of the joint venture is extremely unfair on the behalf of the surgeons. In addition, due to the inability for the taxes to be recorded properly, this aspect of the plan is also illegal.

Furthermore, while the profit breakdown between the hospital and the surgeons is legal, this also does not work towards the benefit of the surgeons. Ultimately, if the plan succeeds, profit will shift towards benefiting the hospital, which is unfair because legally, the surgeons are taking a greater risk by donating their own personal funds. Furthermore, the case study does not provide specifics, but it appears that there is potential conflicts of interest on the behalf of both the surgeons and of the hospital administration.

It may be necessary for this arrangement to be modified in a manner that keeps the ambulatory center in compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. Rather than providing a leadership team that is equally representative of the surgeons and the hospital, the individuals making business decisions should be completely neutral to ensure that the decisions being made are unbiased and are therefore truly made in accordance to the best interest of the patients. Since both the hospital and the surgeons appear to be profit drive, it seems that the operation could be made illegal due to a failure to comply with a number of federal safety regulation in addition to local quality standards. Therefore, the individuals employed for these positions should be individuals that have a mixture of business and administration expertise and could make decisions on behalf of the hospital and the surgeons at once. In doing so, safety measures will be upheld in a manner that is independent of profitability.

Specifically, it appears that the referrals that staff members will be making is against patient safety standards. Based on the way that the case study is phrased, it seems that the surgeons are being requested to make referrals even when they are not necessary in order to drive profit. This takes an unfair advantage of the patient and their insurance company, and can constitute as insurance fraud depending upon how the powers of the surgeons are abused. As a consequence, this plan should not be agreed to. There are some aspects of the joint venture that are inherently illegal on the surface in addition to secondary aspects that have the potential of resulting in illegal action. Thus, it should be avoided altogether.

Ultimately, it is ideal for David to recommend that the hospital does not participate in the joint venture, as is not equally fair to both parties and constitutes some illegal principles. It is the hospital’s responsibility to acquire funds, and there are many ways that this could be done without asking the surgeons to take out personal loans. For a hospital to be financially stable, it must have reasonable income from the treatments it performs and gain additional finances from efforts such as fundraising. These funds could last a long time provided that they are budgeted in a sustainable manner.

The surgeons would be getting scammed if they were to agree to this deal because they are personally liable for the bank loans they withdraw. Essentially, this version of funding is an illegal way to collect money that should have been reported as a donation. Furthermore, the surgeons should recognize that this is a conflict of interest because they are investing money in a venture that they have too much a degree of control over. As a consequence, the patients will be used primarily as a means to profit, which will violate a number of regulations. In order to avoid associated fines, it would be beneficial for the idea to be removed altogether and to focus on a way to make the management of the hospital more effective.

References

Hill, Charles; Jones, Gareth. (2008). Strategic Management: An Integrated Approach (8th Revised edition). Mason, OH: South-Western Educational Publishing

Stratus Healthcare. (2013). Stratus Healthcare Alliance Strategy Detailed. Retrieved from http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/page-1/LED-294488/Stratus-Healthcare-Alliance-Strategy-Detailed

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Health Information Privacy. Retrieved from http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/