Martin Health System is a healthcare center founded by three medical practitioners, namely Van William Burns, Walter F. Davey, and Julian D. Parker in 1939, in Stuart, Florida. It was originally based on the principle that all patients should have access to medical care and treatment irrespective of their racial or financial background. Originally, it consisted of a facility that had twenty-three bed, ten workers, and three physicians, which has now expanded into one MediCenter, three hospitals, a free-standing Emergency Center, as well as, many outpatient clinics. It is a non-profit community based healthcare organization that provides preventive and regular medical care with a variety of health services and treatment plans for numerous health conditions. Martin Health Systems have several programs lined up in the future with the help of philanthropic support from the community, which are aimed at acquiring new technologies, reaching more people and enhancing health care quality to meet the needs of the growing community (Annual Report, 2015). These plans have been discussed briefly in the report presented below
Short term and long term Plans of the Organization
Dedicated to its original principle of providing indiscriminate health care to all, its plans are directed at equipping themselves with modern facilities that assist in prompt and effective medical services. In order to realize its objective of reaching more people, it has formulated a number of short term and long term plans spread over a period of one year to three years respectively, summarized below
Short Term Plans
Short term plans are those plans which are to be realized with a span of one year. Some of the plans identified under this description have been summarized below
Quality and safety. Martin Health plans to initiate immunization and disinfection programs so that infections occurring in hospitals from contagious patients may be lowered substantially through better isolation and safety facilities.
Patient care. It aims at significantly enhancing the patient experience in all three acute care hospitals by a point rating of 3.7
Collaborating with physicians. It plans to align with the physicians resulting in 60th percentile in physician satisfaction.
Expansion. It intends to design and implement strategic growth plans for oncology and cardiovascular services resulting in 5% growth in volume.
Building Networks. It plans to undertake a feasibility analysis of local and regional Clinical integrated networks.
Value added services. Other short term plans include development and participation in bundled payment models, an increase in the number of donors by giving them transformational gifts and implementation of a formal structure to actively manage enterprise risk and volatility.
Long term Plans
Plans which have an implementation period of three years or more are long term plans
Quality and Safety. Become a national leader in high quality, safety, and exceptional patient experience and improving media rating
Engagement. To involve Associates, Physicians, Volunteers, and the community to achieve the mission witnessed by engagement scores in the top 10%
Service Development and Growth. Develop comprehensive, patient centered, healthcare services that registers sustainable care resulting in continuous growth.
Healthcare Reform Readiness: Build an image of the organization through the development of alternative care delivery and payment models, to achieve Medicare targets
Philanthropy: Develop a vision, strategy, and patient experience that results in transformational philanthropic investment of $20 million annually
Financial Strength: Ensure Martin Health System’s ability to fund growth and meet service area needs through strong operating performance resulting in an A rating.
Strategic Thinking
Martin health exhibits a strategic thinking in the plan that is directed at benefitting all key stakeholders by adopting both short term and long term targets and measures. A strategic thinking represents all such plans and policies that are aligned with the organizational goals. The health care sector is shifting its focus from the product or service quality to the client experience (Perera, & Peiró 2012), and martin Health has aligned its strategic thinking with the same. According to the annual report the organization aims to reach more patients and provide a high quality and safe service to its patients with the goal of gaining a competitive advantage over other health care organizations. Making quality and safety its core competency, it aims to carve out a niche for itself in the highly competitive healthcare market. Earning the confidence of physicians and donors through promotional measures it aspires to achieve their recommendation.
There are many stakeholders in the healthcare business. Martin health has identified its key stakeholders as the patients, affiliated physicians, the donors, associates, volunteers, investors and the community. It has a comprehensive plan with a view to protect the interests of all its shareholders.
Martin Health Systems’ strategic plans can be further divided at various levels depending on implementation, decision making and responsibility. These levels are the corporate level, divisional level, organizational level and unit level.
Corporate level plans- Those plans which are finalized and implemented at the top most level of the firm, can be described as building a strong financial base from philanthropic support and ensuring Martin Health System’s ability to fund growth and meet service area needs through excellent operating performance are among the corporate level plans of the organization. It plans to achieve this by creating a vision, strategy, and patient experience resulting in transformational philanthropic investment of $20 million yearly. It plans to implement organizational values such as innovation, collaboration, accountability, respect and excellence within the organization. The corporate level planning includes design of strategic growth plans for Oncology and Cardiovascular services resulting in 5% volume growth.
Divisional level Plans
Plans that have to be executed at different divisions are more specific and aligned with the corporate level plans. The divisional level plans include setting targets for revenue and growth in the number of donors and develop plans for increasing operating income by the finance division. The quality Control and safety division is concerned with diminishing the rate of hospital acquired infections by introducing better methods of immunization. R&D is entrusted the responsibility of planning continued development of the Clinical Business Intelligence program. The marketing division focuses on enhancing competitiveness by servicing more patients through enhanced care facilities.
Organizational Level Plans
Planning which focuses on improving organizational performance consists of designing a formal structure to actively manage enterprise risk and volatility, creating a patient centered management system using lean management intended at transforming the organization, Improving organizational strategic planning process, incorporating a comprehensive patient experience program and working on key Quality and Safety outcomes and practicing evidence based practice models (EBPM).
The planning done at the operating level by forming teams supervised by leaders to achieve organizational plans and targets are unit level planning. Organizational objectives are assigned to specific teams headed by persons specializing in those areas such as finance, safety, pathology and public relations
Competitive Analysis
Martin Health System has been acknowledged for the fifth year in succession as a Most Wired Hospital by the American Hospital Association’s Health Forum which recognizes the incorporation of IT to improve performance for value-based health care in the areas of infrastructure, business and administration; quality and safety; and clinical integration (Murphy, D. 2016). The fact that Martin Health is the only recipient on the Treasure Coast, shows that it is well ahead of its competitors in innovation, safety, quality control and value added patient care systems.
Directional Approach, Alternatives and Value Addition
Martin Health has described its vision statement as ‘to be an innovative healthcare system nationally recognized for clinical excellence and improving the health and well-being of the communities we serve.’ All of its efforts are directed at realizing this vision and building a competitive edge in the healthcare business by providing exclusive patient care through high quality services. Improving patient care experience, enhancing quality and safety services to inpatients and expansion of facilities across the United States are corporate level plans necessitating investments and its strategies are directed at increasing the number of donors through incentives.
However, Martin health has alternate strategies that show its preparedness to deal with contingencies in the form of planning to increase its own revenues through expansion and lean management and its reform readiness plans.
It also provides value added services to its patients by offering them packages such as bundled payment methods and online payment facilities. There are transformational gifts and plans for physician satisfaction.
Martin Health Strategies are directed at improving performance and competitiveness through expansion, better patient services, more participation from volunteers and physicians and improvement of safety and quality which will attract more donors and investors. To summarize it is geared up to meet the future challenges and reach more patients across the country.
References
Martinhealth.com (2016). About: Martin Health System. Retrieved from https://www.martinhealth.org/about-martin-health
Murphy, D. (2016, July). Martin health receives “most wired” designation for fifth time. Martin Health News and Events. Retrieved from https://www.martinhealth.org/martin-health-receives-most -wired-designation-for-fifth-time
Perera, F. D. P. R., & Peiró, M. (2012). Strategic planning in healthcare organizations. Revista Española de Cardiología (English Edition), 65(8), 749-754.
