Services that the center should provide:
The center will provide mainly outpatient services including diagnosis and treatment. The location of the facility informs this decision. The facility is located in a mall. There are a number of advantages towards having the facility located in the mall. The biggest of these reasons is that a mall is convenient to its users. The design of malls ensures that a user can access multiple services under the same roof. It is therefore advantageous for the hospital facility to be located within the mall. Customers visiting the mall can access health services easily. However, the convenience of the mall also brings its major disadvantage to many organizations.
Space is at a premium at a mall and therefore facilities cannot be able to lease all the space they need. For instance, it would not make economic sense to have inpatient services in the facility located in the mall. The additional space needed to accommodate the services would be very expensive. Many malls also have limited operating hours. This would make it difficult to operate a 24-hour facility especially during off peak shopping hours.
For these major reasons, the facility should offer mainly outpatient services. This means that healthcare personnel will be present at the facility to offer services such as diagnosis, testing, and treatment (Low & Rui, 2016). Patients who would be dealt with at the facility would be treated and released. However, if a patient’s condition cannot be effectively addressed at the facility, they will be referred to the main hospital where they can get specialized treatment.
Recommended hours of operations:
Furthermore, because the facility will be located in a shopping mall, it would be best if it operated within the operating window of the mall. Many malls operate between 8.00 am and 10.00 pm. ideally the facility should open to the public an hour after the operations of the mall have started. This would provide the workers at the facility with ample time to prepare for the day ahead. Closing times for the facility should also be an hour prior to the closing time of the mall. This would allow the workers at the time to deal with any patients already in queue before the mall closes. Therefore, the recommended operating hours for the facility would be between 9.00 am and 9.00 pm. This recommendation provides sufficient hours for the facility to deal with the patients who might be among the pedestrian traffic at the mall. Once operational, the facility will always have staff present to take care of clients. Breaks will be taken in shifts to ensure that patients do not have to spend too much in line waiting to be treated (Hayward, 2016). In extreme conditions, the facility can ask for additional support from the main hospital if there is too much congestion.
Equipment and technology needed to provide the recommended services:
A number of equipment is going to be necessary to operate the facility. The facility will have a reception center, several consultation rooms, a number of examination rooms, a laboratory, a magnetic imaging room, and a pharmacy. Each of these spaces needs to be equipped properly in order for the facility to operate properly (Hayward, 2016). When a patient arrives, they will be received at the reception where their details will be taken and they are assigned a physician. They will then proceed to their physician in the consultation room. After that, the patient will head to the examination room where the physician will examine them. After this, the physician can recommend tests or imaging. The patient will then proceed to the required room where their tests or imaging will be done. Finally, the patient will wait for the results at the reception before going to the consultation room again to receive their results. Finally, the patient can pick prescriptions from the pharmacy.
All the rooms will have appropriate furniture and fittings. These should be durable as well as easy to clean. This will make maintaining hygiene at the facility easier to achieve (Hayward, 2016). Apart from the specialized furniture and fittings, the facility will also have specialized equipment needed to run operations. The main equipment that will be present will be a magnetic resonance imaging machine and an x-ray machine in the imaging room. These are key equipment needed to ensure that diagnosis can be made easily. The estimated cost for these pieces of equipment is projected at $200,000. The laboratory will also have the necessary equipment such as centrifuges and freezers needed to operate efficiently.
The type of corporation the center should consider:
The offsite center located at the mall will operate as a branch of the main facility. The offsite location aims at easing access to patients, as it is located in an area with high pedestrian traffic. This makes it more convenient for clients to seek outpatient services at the facility rather than having to visit the main hospital itself. As the facility only deals with outpatient services, any serious cases that it cannot handle at the mall facility will require referring to the main hospital. This makes it easy for the hospital if the relationship between the offsite facility and the main hospital was that of a branch nature. This would mean that the physicians located at the mall facility are the same physicians who operate from the main hospital. Because of the limited services offered at the offsite facility, the physicians can schedule further consultations with their patients at the main facility. This will allow them to take advantage of the equipment available at the main facility. While there, they will have access to specialized equipment and services that would allow them to comprehensively deal with their patients’ needs.
In addition, because the offsite facility will offer a number of different services, a department relationship cannot effectively describe it. A department in a hospital will mainly offer one type of service. For instance, there can be a renal department. The purpose of this department is to deal with all renal matters in the hospital. However, because the offsite facility will offer multiple services from different departments, it will not be a department of the main hospital. Another option would be to approach the offsite location as a separate legal entity. This would shield the main hospital from problems at the offsite facility and vice versa. Despite this making economic sense, it would not be ideal for the relationship of the two entities because their activities intertwine closely. This would reduce the convenience for customers especially those who need the services of both facilities. In a branch scenario, the patient can receive his or her bill once. On the other hand, in the separate entity scenario, the patient will receive his or her bill twice. The operations would also be difficult, as the two entities would have to bill each other for services provided to either facility.
References:
Low, S. P., & Rui, Z. (2016). Service quality for facilities management in hospitals. Singapore : Springer
Hayward, C. (2016). Healthcare facility planning: Thinking strategically. Chicago, IL: HAP
