Free Essay On Resource Allocation

Resource allocation can be referred to as a situation of assigning as well as managing assets in a manner that is in line with the strategic goals set by an organization. It involves balancing of competing priorities, needs and determining the appropriate course of action (Xiao & Chen, 2013). Resources have to be allocated since they are limited and their demand exceeds supply and this makes allocation become a problem. Healthcare has resources ranging from material to human beings (Hulshof et al., 2013). Availability of human resources can be limited and health care facilities may experience acute shortage since not everyone can become a healthcare professional. Additionally, medical facilities, the number of equipment, number of organs for donation or even amounts of blood can as well be limited. Therefore, resource allocation becomes necessary.
A healthcare facility has to manage its resources effectively. There are varieties of mechanisms put in place to ensure that this is made possible. Financial resources are the most important resource in a facility (Marmot et al., 2012). To undertake this, a healthcare facility has to take care of the donations earned, cash flows, and the ability to attract capital and also how to deal with debt. Financial resources allocated to the facility are spent only using the set financial targets. To effectively manage this, the healthcare ought to employ qualified and competent personnel to facilitate and manage the funds.
Another method of how a hospital can better manage its supply is making its resources visible. Notably, it is common to find a facility has multiple projects against a limited set of resources (Nelson & Nelson, 2013). These projects compete for the same assets. To ensure that there is effective and at the same time productive use of funds, the facility opts to make its resources visible. Using a big picture to see the facility inner working enables it to see the Real-time data, inventory numbers and employee workloads without even switching in between the spreadsheets.
On the other hand, my facility manages supplies through adaptation. For instance, there was a time when everyone thought the earth is flat, but when it was realized that it is round, sailors no longer fear that they will sail out of the earth, they had to adapt to this (Sung & Lee., 2016). As such, the hospital has also resulted in adaptation to manage its possessions. This is through the hiring of experts to help them to respond to changes in the sector so as to maximize the use of resources at the same time cut unnecessary costs (Marmot et al., 2012). The facility adopts new and emerging trends available in the sector to manage its resources.
Additionally, the management has resulted in the prioritization of projects to effectively manage assets. This involves starting with the most vital projects and those that are not urgent are postponed to a later date (Hulshof et al., 2013). This helps the hospital from falling into traps of using funds on projects against the plans set before. Not all programs are equal and, therefore, in choosing the most critical projects, the health care center is guided by the set plans and targets. By doing this, the facility minimizes chances of sailing over the edge.
There are processes and systems set in place by the administration to ensure that effective management of allocated resources takes place. Notably, the facility sets budgets. A budget acts as a guideline on how it can effectively utilize its financial resources (Sung & Lee., 2016). The hospital has its sources of income, such as allotment from the federal government, but at the same time, there are also expenses. The budget would, therefore, guide the facility not to misuse the resources and avoid chances of running into losses. Once objectives have been set, resources need to be allocated to them so that they would be achieved as planned (Marmot et al., 2012). Failure to plan is planning to fail and hence clear budgets provide a clear guideline.
Another system put in place to effectively manage allocated resources is the strategic planning. This begins with the formulation of the vision and mission. Setting plans provides a road map on how to undertake activities and avoid chances of doing unplanned things that may consume extra resources (Hulshof et al., 2013). A clear strategic plan helps to come up with a preference list of needs and goals in which the most significant projects are at the top of the list. This move helps in minimizing unplanned spending.
Consequently, logistics management of the available resources is another system that has been put in place by the administration. The management understands the significance of having logistical information how its funds flow in and out of the health care facility (Marmot et al., 2012). There are a lot of funds that come in and out of the healthcare but if there are no sound systems that manage their movement, some of them would end up getting lost and this is a big loss to the healthcare facility. This method would as well minimize wastage of resources.
The organization has also resolved to use the enterprise resource planning in a bid to avoid wastages of resources. The method helps to establish essential resources needed to run the facility (Hulshof et al., 2013). These resources include inventory, human resources, order management, and customer relationship management. This process creates a shared database for utilization of resources (Sung & Lee., 2016). The objective of this process is also to minimize wastages and to maximize their usage at the same time minimizing the cost of operation.
Resources allocation and distribution is determined by the scarcity of the resource. This brings out the need for rationing. This guide on how to distribute a given supply that is in limited to the department or person who really needs it (Hulshof et al., 2013). This often happens in the cases of organ transplant. Where to distribute the limited resource, the administration has to look at the magnitude of the problem at hand and give it to the patient in need (Marmot et al., 2012). The physicians are also rationed depending on the time in which they are available to provide the needed service.
The ethical principle of distributive justice is also used to allocate and distribute resources. In an egalitarian society, every person has an equal opportunity to have access to scarce resources (Marmot et al., 2012). Healthcare organizations are, therefore, required to provide services and care that is due. Thus, this principle also provides directions when faced with hard decisions to establish the best way to spend a given resource and it ends up bringing the greatest good to the majority of stakeholder. This principle also requires that before a given task is allocated a given resource, it is important to first look at the contribution that task would have to the society or the organization in the future.
Additionally, resource allocation and distribution is also determined by social and managerial dilemmas. The production and acquisition of resources such as health personnel, drugs, pieces of equipment and knowledge have a great force in the determination of how resources would be allocated and distributed (Marmot et al., 2012). The equitable access and quality health care to all clients should be the overriding factor in determining how resources should be allocated.
There are some changes that need to be initiated in the resource allocation process. The healthcare facility should take into consideration ethics during this exercise. The cost of health care is rising so fast and, therefore, it is becoming hard for most of the patients to afford treatment, hence, creating health disparities in the sector (Hulshof et al., 2013). The resources to provide quality health care are limited and, therefore, if ethics are applied in the allocation of resources, it would ensure that the decisions made to provide the greatest good to the healthcare facility and the majority of the patients.
Conclusively, health care resources will continue to be scarce and, therefore, there is the need for proper allocation and distribution of resources to ensure that they bring the greatest satisfaction to both the healthcare and the general public (Hulshof et al., 2013). Healthcare facilities are striving to offer quality care at the lowest cost and at the same to maximize use of resources. To effectively manage resources, the healthcare facility should have an excellent financial management mechanism, adaptation and prioritize its projects. But for this to happen, the healthcare facilities need to have clear strategies on how to spend resources and also a good budget that would guide this resource allocation.
References
Hulshof, P. J., Boucherie, R. J., Hans, E. W., & Hurink, J. L. (2013). Tactical resource allocation and elective patient admission planning in care processes.Health care management science, 16(2), 152-166.
Marmot, M., Allen, J., Bell, R., Bloomer, E., & Goldblatt, P. (2012). WHO European review of social determinants of health and the health divide. The Lancet, 380(9846), 1011-1029.
Sung, I., & Lee, T. (2016). Optimal allocation of emergency medical resources in a mass casualty incident: Patient prioritization by column generation.European Journal of Operational Research.
Xiao, Z., Song, W., & Chen, Q. (2013). Dynamic resource allocation using virtual machines for cloud computing environment. Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Transactions on, 24(6), 1107-1117.
Nelson, H. L., & Nelson, J. L. (2013). Justice in the allocation of health care resources: A feminist account. Meaning and Medicine: A Reader in the Philosophy of Health Care, 289.