Homework For Health Care Management
Chapter 4-Hospitals: Origin, Organization and Performance
Due at 5PM CST, Monday, September 11, 2017
Assigned Readings: Chapter 4
Answer the following questions: Homework For Health Care Management
- For a hospital to operate efficiently and effectively, the three important influences in its governance, medical staff, board of trustees, and administration, must work together in reasonable harmony. What factors might contribute to tensions among these groups?
- As the nursing profession has expanded through advanced degrees, specialization, and clinical practice, nurses’ salaries and responsibilities have also increased. Now, hospitals substitute non-nurses for nurses to perform all but the most technical tasks. What are the implications for the nursing profession? Have nurses lost their traditional role of hands-on patient care and, if so, is that to their advantage or disadvantage? Homework For Health Care Management
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- The traditional management style of hospitals has been hierarchical and internally focused. What are three important challenges that face hospitals to accommodate new payer and consumer expectations?
- The availability of hospital insurance removed an important cost constraint from hospital services and charges. What were some positive and negative consequences of that development?
- The organization and practices of modern hospitals reflect the promotion of specialization and sub-specialization by academic health centers. What were the advantages and disadvantages to patients of increasing the number of physicians who limit their activities to narrower fields of practice?
- With significant oversupply of hospital beds in the U.S. what is the rationale for taxpayer support of the separate and costly hospital system of the Department of Veterans Affairs? Homework For Health Care Management
With lives in their hands, hospitals have to function very precisely, executing high-quality services every hour of every day. Organizations that have this sort of requirement usually take on a vertical organizational structure – having many layers of management, with most of the organization’s staff working in very specific, narrow, low-authority roles. The numerous layers of management are designed to make sure that no one person can throw the system off too much. This structure also ensures that tasks are being done exactly and correctly Homework For Health Care Management.
Boards of Directors
Hospitals are corporations and are therefore overseen by boards of directors. Nonprofit hospitals have boards that often consist of influential members of health care and local communities. Many hospitals were founded by a religious group and maintain religious affiliation. These hospitals often include clergy and congregation leadership in their boards.
Educationally affiliated hospitals are often overseen by universities. Therefore, university boards of trustees or regents may double as the board of directors for a hospital. Multi-hospital systems, particularly for-profit ones, usually have one board of directors overseeing numerous facilities.
Executives Oversee Day-to-Day Operations
Boards of directors leave it to their executives to see that their decisions are carried out and that the day-to-day operations of the hospital are performed successfully. The chief executive officer is the top boss responsible for everything that goes on in a hospital. However, hospitals usually have chief nursing officers, chief medical officers, chief information officers, chief financial officers and sometimes chief operating officers, who also carry a lot of weight. This group of top executives forms the central core management.
Hospital Department Administrators
The top managers of each hospital department report to the core management. These people are responsible for one type of medical or operational service. Most departments are areas of patient care such as orthopedics, labor and delivery or the emergency department. There also are non-patient-care departments such as food services and billing.
Clinical departments usually have large staffs, significant supply and purchasing needs and numerous regulations they must comply with. Therefore, administrators often have assistant administrators who help them oversee their multifaceted operations Homework For Health Care Management.
Patient Care Managers
Within a department, there are the people who directly oversee patient care. Nurse managers, directors of rehabilitation services and supervising physicians have people under them who give hands-on patient care. This level of management ensures that the staff members are acting appropriately, giving the best care, addressing all of their duties, complying with hospital and legal requirements and, for nurses and allied health care workers, following physician orders.
When something goes wrong with a patient or a clinician, these people handle the problem. They also usually oversee schedules and basic human resource functions for their employees.
Patient Service Providers
Most of a hospital is composed of service-providing staff. From nurses and physical therapists to line cooks and laundry workers, it takes a lot of hands-on staff to make everything happen. These people have very specific job descriptions and duties, which hospitals need them to perform very well to ensure the safety and health of patients Homework For Health Care Management.