Case Study Faith Hospital

Faith Hospital is in need for some positive changes. As with many health care institutions the need to change to better meet the demands and expectations of our patients and our community is always there. These changes will help Faith hospital become a stronger force within the medical community. And allow our staff to continue to serve and help others live longer and healthier lives for many years to come.

This hospital needs to be run without an operating loss. To do this we will have to make some changes in policy and in how this hospital functions. We need to reach the expectations of our mission statement:

"With the foundation and commitment of our spiritual heritage and values, our mission is to promote the health and well-being of the people in the communities we serve through a comprehensive continuum of services provided in collaboration with the partners who share the same vision and values."

In order to continue to achieve the quality of care that has become a standard here at this institution we will need to either increase our patient population significantly or to reduce our fixed costs by 15% in one year, to continue to break even. We must do this and continue to serve all our patients in the manner that our board has defined through our mission statement.

There are several issues that need to be addressed to help bring the organization back into the black and in line with the high standards required by our board. The first issue is the fact that DNR or Do Not Resuscitate orders have not been handled properly. There have been instances of physicians not following these orders, or the misplacement of these orders. Another issue is that policies have not been sufficiently put in place to define what to do with patients that arrive without insurance. These policies should be so clear that misunderstanding the policy would be impossible. The last issue is that we have growing costs, and reduced patients, to keep this institution running we need to increase our reimbursement rate per patient.

Although these problems may seem insurmountable in any period of time, they are not. We can fix these issues by implementing a few changes and modifying the way we communicate and understand the business. To better track patients and their files we need a better system. Many of the errors are caused by missing or incorrect paper work. Devising a way to make it easier to find, track and enter patient information can solve this. The legal department needs to clearly set policies and find a way to communicate these policies through the hospital. Once the policies are known there will be penalties for not following policy. We also need to increase the patient population, this means we need to get more people to choose this hospital over others; this is done by advertising our strengths and getting our name out there. Another way to increase our numbers is for accounts payable to get serious and sometimes creative on getting quick and correct reimbursements from insurance companies.

To better handle patient's records and information we need to implement new technology to track and handle patients and patient information. This needs to be done in conjunction with all other departments, such as admittance and billing. This new computer infrastructure will increase everyone's efficiency. The legal department will need to hold workshops with all employees to verify that the new policies are communicated properly. Legal department also need to hire someone who is an expert in receiving grants, and getting financial aid to less fortunate patients who do get admitted to our hospital. They should setup programs to add financial incentives to doctors that assist the hospital in receiving grant money from outside organizations. Advertising the fact that this hospital will be the leader in technology for patient records, and explain how this will help us become a leader in zero-mistake hospital care. Billboards and radio ads will encourage patients to choose this hospital over others.

Implementation of this plan will be as follows, for the technology we will implement a wireless computing infrastructure. Paper records will be a thing of the past, every physician and medical staffer who needs access to records will have a wireless tablet computer that will have access to any piece of information that we have on the client for this visit as well as every visit to this hospital. This will eliminate lost records and misunderstanding that come from paper charts with handwritten notes. This new computer system will also have recommendations for treatments after symptoms have been entered, this should eliminate some tests that are not necessary that might be ordered by less experienced. This plan will be headed up by our head of information technology, and will be completed in 1-year time.

Legal will need to create a policy manual for every employee type. All the employees will have a manual for their job type. Only policies that are important to them will be in their manual.