Strategic planning is an essential aspect in health care organization as it helps realize the potential of the visions they aim at achieving. It also helps strengthen the organizations service by providing sufficient management and governance strategies that are needed to respond to the rapid and dramatic changes in today’s health care environment. The main achievement in realizing the strategic agendas is that it helps assess current strategies and make changes that facilitate response to the market and industry forces. It also helps in developing plans to achieve strategic goals and objectives. In addition, it helps ensure that governance and management structures support organizational strategies which also facilitate the processes that result in collaborative arrangements among health care providers. Medical staffs’ role in strategic planning involves assessing and shaping organizations’ structure and increases team effectiveness at the board, executive and medical staff levels. It also helps enhance board and management performance.
Roles of Medical Staff
Strategic management requires responsibility that includes the functions that must be regularly executed. These responsibilities differ depending to the control structure. The administrative management or rather staff involves functions that are required by all control centers. They also assist in carrying out additional responsibilities related to the management of patient care. The management structure includes site administrators for every ambulatory site and functional managers within each service line. The roles carried out by medical staff require determination based on their strategy and plan for execution through the modified control structure. Some of the roles carried out by medical staff involve maintaining authority over leadership group activities. They also provide guidance and leadership to the other workers. This requires helping out in activities carried out in the overall structure of the health care organization. Another role involves understanding the difference between strategic staff development plans and traditional plans. Traditional planning helps focus on supply and demand while strategic planning helps build the specific recommendations and implementation policies. The medical staff help in strategic planning that requires more qualitative data such as physician surveys, administrator feedback and the involvement of a select workgroup (Delisa, 2005).
Improving Quality
Medical staffs also help in achieve strategic management by improving the quality of patient care and patient outcomes. They take part in proactively and systematically improving the patient of the patients who also improves the status of the hospital and also helps meet the objectives of the health care organization. The medical staff enhances customer service and improves patient satisfaction by increasing the capacity and improving access to services for patients and referring physicians. The roles played by medical staff in realizing strategic management entail structural planning process that is essential for the various departments in the organization. They also help in gathering relevant internal and external environmental data. When they carry out their services in attending patients as well as implementing the activities of the organization, they keep records of the patients and the things that should be adopted and changed in order to achieve the objectives of the organization. This helps in gathering information on the internal and external constraints that hinder development within the organization. It also helps create logical structures that help define the organization in terms of their mission and vision. This also facilitates all planning of meetings to ensure that the client develops plans that address all critical issues. Strategic management helps in addressing the customer needs where the staff members ensure that the customers are or rather clients are assisted in every way possible. Customer needs are part of the organizational objectives and they should be addressed accordingly in order to maintain the organizational objectives. The staff members ensure customer satisfaction and in case any of the customers reports disapproval in any of their service rendering it should be taken with a lot of consideration.
Organizing Information
Staff members help in challenging the clients on strategic and business issues and decisions by ensuring, that the clients ask the necessary questions and consider the variety of options that help create strategic plans documents that ensure accountability for each action. The staff members help the clients to identify and organize the appropriate information for inclusion in preparing packages that will be distributed to the strategic planning task force. This helps the clients assemble the right level of information. It also helps in minimizing fees that should be necessary for gathering information planning. This helps in avoiding overloads in the process as the clients information is coordinated with market studies, assessing competitors as well as the payment details that are linked with the qualitative analysis necessary for planning purposes. The staff members are also involved in analyzing the internal strengths and weaknesses as well the external threats and opportunities that facilitate in drawing strategic implications (Ross, 1998). The strategic management process involves grouping the staff members in functional groups that are divided to serve different roles within the organization. This helps in realizing the objectives of the organization in that the different groups operate differently towards achieving the mission and vision of the organization. It also helps in addressing the issues within the organization where retreat groups identify and analyze a wide range of planning alternatives.
Retreat Groups
The medical staffs are organized in retreat groups that hold meetings off-site in a retreat setting. This helps structuring the objectives of the organization as well facilitating the development of effective planning strategies. These meetings are held in order to ensure that the medical staffs give their input to the organizational objectives. They help identify the major concerns, issues and decisions that confront the organization within the years that follow. The staff members involved in these meetings helps the organization in creating the mission statements and develops draft strategic visions and major goals for the organization. They deliver reports and findings that help the organization in planning for the future as address the issues that have been raised by the clients. This is done through discussing the future steps in the planning process that give feedback sessions with the stakeholders. The medical staffs are also involved in completing business planning activities as part of their role. They are involved in performing activities that are related to technology assessment and product standardization. They are also involved in assisting in areas such as physician planning and recruiting as well as developing and overseeing quality programs (Spiegel, 1991).
Control Structure
The control structure within the health care industry should reflect the strategies of the organization. It should also address the complaints made by the physicians and give more insight in solving the problem that arises. The role of the staff members is to ensure that the decision making process is carried out quickly and effectively. They also establish or are involved in expanding programs within the hospital to improve care coordination and access to physician services for inpatients. They are also nurtured to take the lead in developing protocols that help address deficiencies and to encourage and educate their peers to new practices and procedures. The medical staffs use public performance reports as opportunities to identify deficiencies and improve care, health outcomes as well as patient satisfaction. These reports are then submitted to the Boards of Directors and parent health systems that closely monitor and set quality related goals. They also acquire executives who communicate a culture of quality through personal examples, supportive policies and investment resources.
Education
The medical staffs play the role of educating patients about basic safety procedures both in hospital and at home and the relevant questions they should be asking their care givers. They also facilitate problem solving techniques and protocol development in that they focus on improving specific processes that have had deficiencies. Medical staffs are the people on the ground that get into contact with the clients or are the first people to meet the clients. Therefore, they help market the organization in terms of how they present themselves. As we all know, the first impression is the lasting impression. If the clients visit the organization for the first time and are pleased with the way the staff members treat them or handle them in terms of assistance, they will be obliged to visit the organization again in case they have a problem. They will not hesitate to visit the health care as they were pleased by the way the staff members presented themselves. Good customer service is very essential in every organization as it helps attract more customers (Crosson, 2010).
Implementation of Organizational changes
The medical staffs play the role of implementing the structural and organizational changes that have been made in the hospitals. These include establishing the systematic processes that are necessary for identifying and solving problems. They also help in creating clinical guidelines and protocols that are utilized in all areas of the health care organization. They also help in achieving the departmental quality plans and establishment of specific goals that are used in short term and long term activities. They improve accuracy and efficiency of medication dispensing and enable more efficient data collection. This is coupled with improving the work environment and reputation that helps increase in patient and staff satisfaction and morale. They improve the status of the medical organization within the community by promoting better abilities that attract quality services and performance. The medical staffs carry out activities that are essential in managing time and information in the medical industry. They help in minimizing costs through their accountability of the resources used within the hospital. Their response to the supervisors enables proper budgeting and allocation of resources that prevents loss.
Response as a medical staff role
In addition to this, they give response to the managers in terms of the required resources and helps planning of future activities through the performance reports that give data based on the activities of the past. These reports are generated with utmost precaution as they give account of the expenditure and revenue generated within a given period of time. They give full account of the activities that were carried out over the years that have passed and helps plan for the future depending on the deficiencies recorded. This process helps in time management and maintaining a positive responsive and high motivation by keeping a current understanding of management techniques and substantive issues of health care management. This in turn helps in developing and applying appropriate technical, interpersonal and conceptual skills and competencies that effectively move the organization to the next level (Bate, 2008).
Talent Recruitment
Another role of the medical staffs is that they help in identifying and promoting talent. This is done through carrying out their activities in an effective manner where the staff members portray their skill set in performing their tasks. This brings out their various talents in every field. It helps build the strategic management of the organization as the identification of talent helps in maintaining the required management functions and the requisite number and types of highly motivated employees. This helps the healthcare compete effectively and attract more clients as a way of boosting the strategic management. It also helps in securing and retaining the talent needed to carry out the activities in the best way possible. Similarly, medical staffs work closely with the clients to design the custom and facilitate processes and events that enable sponsors as well as board members and physician leaders to clarify the mission, vision and goals. They help them to develop the organizations, the teams involved and the staff members as well to support implementation of the strategic plans and to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness.
The staff members within the healthcare industry help to keep the managers on their toes in terms of realizing the organizational goals. They meet the requirements of the organization and give a platform for the managers to make decisions related to the strategic management. This is in line with the organizational policies as the managers give more analyze the reports formulated and respond to them by offering the necessary tools. The staff members give professional relations to the clients and help them get treatment in the desired procedures which helps meet the organizational goals as the mission and vision involves rendering quality service to the clients. They promote areas of interest within the healthcare industry by ensuring that the clients are satisfied with the services offered and bring to attention the managers in case of supplies or products that are needed. The staff members are divided among tasks that reflect many considerations. This helps promote different factors in the power of different professions.
Another role carried out by the medical staffs is the development of strategic plan timelines. This ensures that the recommended plans are revised accordingly to give events that trigger the development of a medical staff plan. These include: pending recruitments that require documentation of need. They are also involved in demographic factors that consider physician recruitment. This is where medical staff development plans are created that focus on growth rates and establishing a presence where the health system can benefit from anticipated growth. They also define the size and scope of a neighborhood where the geographical area in which they provide medical services is calculated. This helps in considering the mileage of the hospitals coverage and focuses on the various strategies that should be applied in order to facilitate the means of providing medical services within that area. The medical staffs help in defining the role of the hospitals where they identify the need for a missing specialty or service line. This is coupled with the demand and supply, services quality issues as well as clinical quality issues (DeLisa, 2005).
Implementation check
Similarly, the medical staffs help in ensuring that the planning elements are not overlooked. This involves surveying of the activities carried out as well as evaluating the efficiency of the physicians in order to identify the areas that may have had errors within the formulation of reports. It also ensures that the medical staffs are adequately aware of the objectives. They also enhance a culture of professionalism and humanism within the organization that requires treating the clients with utmost care. They also form the basis where clients can consult them on behalf of the managers regarding their organization. The activities they carry out are oriented to the organizations goals as they work towards achieving the goals the goals defined by the organization.
References
Bate P., Mendel, P., Robert, G., & Nuffield Trust for Research and Policy Studies in Health Services (2008). Organizing for quality: The improvement journeys of leading hospitals in Europe and the United States. Oxford: Radcliffe.
Crosson, F. J., & Tollen, L. A. (2010). Partners in health: How physicians and hospitals can be accountable together. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
DeLisa, J. A., Gans, B. M., & Walsh, N. E. (2005). Physical medicine and rehabilitation: Principles and practice. (Physical medicine and rehabilitation.) Philadelphia, Pa.: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Ross, A., Williams, S. J., & Pavlock, E. J. (1998). Ambulatory care management. Albany: Delmar Publishers.
Spiegel, A. D., & Hyman, H. H. (1991). Strategic health planning: Methods and techniques applied to marketing and management. Norwood, N.J: Ablex Pub. Corp.
