Al Ain Hospital Case Study

Al Ain Hospital

Introduction

Al Ain Hospital believes in serving community by providing it with quality patient care while focusing on clinical excellence. It comprises of more than 35 specialty departments and has more than 300 doctors. The hospital is 402 bed acute care as well as emergency hospital that serve the entire Al Ain community as well as the region around. It is the key regional healthcare provider for multidisciplinary ambulatory diagnostics as well as treatment, with more than 20,000 in-patients along with 320,000 patients in its out patients clinic on yearly basis. It has always been highly committed towards delivering high quality healthcare in completely safe, confidential as well as caring environment which is in line with international standards. At the hospital it is the patients who always come first (SEHA, 2015).

Considering the quality of services provided by the Al Ain Hospital this essay analyses the three innovative ideas that are used by Al Ain Hospital in its operations management. Along with that it also discusses the three main health utilization indicators in Al Ain Hospital. Finally it also discusses the three challenges as along with their possible solutions in the management of the department of pharmacy, radiology and laboratory at the hospital.

Three Innovative Ideas in Operations Management in Al Ain Hospital

1. Delivering Quality and Affordable Health services

Delivering quality as well as affordable health care to the UAE people is an enormous challenge along with an opportunity (Karuppan et al., 2016). Innovations can be the best way out for health care facilities to run successfully and provide services. Healthcare organizations across UAE have been the most complex form of human organization that has been managed. In order to rein their costs, enhance the quality of services as well as to sustain revenue streams the healthcare organizations like Al Ain Hospitals have to rethink the manner in which they deliver the services and care (Karuppan et al., 2016).

1. Enhanced Operations Management

At Al Ain Hospital operations management acts as the science that helps in making products or for providing services and plays very crucial role. Operations management helps in providing knowledge as well as skills for creating value along the entire care continuum. Operations management brings in innovative ideas that help in making considerable contributions   to efficient as well as effective delivery of health care services at Al Ain Hospital. Operations management helps in handling a range of health care issues like location planning for health & hospital services; organization of hospital resources, treatment scheduling along with surgery scheduling. All these issues are being handled within numerous health care environments for example preventive care, rehabilitation hospitals, hospitals, as well as outpatient clinics (Carter et al., 2012).

1. Process Innovations

 Innovation in the health care is the main driving force that helps in balancing cost containment as well as health care quality. Thus innovation is considered to be critical part of business productivity as well as competitive survival. Innovative ideas at Al Ain Hospital are mainly related to product, process or structural innovations (Varkey et al., 2008) . The product in this case is the things for which the customer pays and mostly consists of the products or the services for example clinical procedure innovations.  Process innovations on the other hand consist of innovations in the production or method of delivery. Mostly the customer does not make payments directly for the process, but the process is being required so as to deliver the service / product. Thus process innovation can be called as a novel change in the act of producing or the delivery of the product which helps in significant amount of increase in the value that is being delivered to one or more stakeholders. Structural innovation in health care mainly impacts the external as well as internal infrastructure as well as assists in creation of new business models (Lehoux et al., 2008).

1. Adopting Latest Technology

 Therefore Innovation in healthcare operations management  can be called as  introducing new concept , service,  product, idea or process which is aimed at  bringing higher improvements  in diagnosis, outreach , treatment,  prevention, research as well as education  as well as it has long term goals  to bring about improvement  in safety,  efficiency,  costs, quality as well as outcomes . Information technology is considered to be the main driver of innovation in operations management field of healthcare (Gupta, 2008) . Al Ain Hospital has been very quick in adopting breakthrough technology in its medical treatments, devices along with procedures. It also has brought dramatic improvements  in the network security  as well as its ability to transmit images  as well as data  globally thus giving  it an opportunity to revolutionize the health care sector (Omachonu & Einspruch, 2010).

1. Automatic Tracking Software

Automatic tracking software programs have been introduced. They have started putting electronic tags on all sort of things form ventilators to EKG monitors so that they can be easily located in case of emergency. There are surgical sponges with electronic tags so that they do not get sewn up in the patients (Faulkner & Kent, 2001) . They have also started tagging patients as it helps in cutting down the waiting time sin emergency rooms. They also have electronic personal health record (ePHR) solution which allows the consumers to record as well as selectively share health care information about themselves in a highly secure way. There is electronic  Clinician Health Record solution (eCHR) too  that allows the physicians  as well as other health acre providers  to access healthcare information in highly secure way , collated form large number of trusted sources and connected with an individual patient in highly  structured manner and is easily accessible way (Omachonu & Einspruch, 2010).

 Three Main Health Utilization Indicators in Al Ain Hospital

Utilization can be defined as the result of interaction between health professionals as well as the patients, while in economic terms it is related to the production of health services by Al Ain Hospital (Da Silva et al., 2011). The health services utilization indicators are mostly expressed through volumes so services as well as outcomes (Folland et al., 2006) . Health service utilization can be assessed from two perspectives that is:  the physician’s or the patient’s. The four essential elements needed of used as indicators for health service utilization are: first contact, comprehensiveness, longitudinally as well as coordination / integration (Da Silva et al., 2011). The three main health utilization indicators used by Al Ain include: