Introduction
Strategic Management is an important, albeit an often taken for granted part, of organizational management . What most people do not realize is that trends and changes in consumer behavior and preferences exist in any market and so successful implementation of major initiatives and goals as elected by the top management, in behalf of the owners and members of the board, are imperative for a continuously successful and evolving company . As many of us know, a company that fails to change and evolve is a company that would eventually fail to survive. The objective of this paper is to discuss the overall organizational structure of Island Urgent Care, a medical institution situated in Hawaii Kai.
What are the Organization’s Mission and Vision?
The company envisions being the one of the top, if not the top, provider of primary and secondary medical and healthcare services in Hawaii Kai. In order to attain that mission, the company has long selected being able to provide the highest quality of medical and healthcare service whenever and wherever possible by employing highly credentialed (both in terms of educational background and experience), and board certified physicians and professional in the field of allied medicine. Most of the company’s seasoned medical and healthcare staff members are assigned in its emergency care department, one of its busiest. These staff members have had extensive training and experience in many branches of emergency care and medicine which includes but are not limited to pediatrics, gynecology, geriatrics, orthopedics, and the delivery of first aid.
What are the Organization’s Key Values?
Based on the attention that the company pays on different key values, it can be argued that they pay special attention to these four values: compassion, quality of care, integrity, and responsiveness. Through compassion, quality of care, integrity, and responsiveness, the company hopes to be known as an organization that acknowledges the numerous and unique medical and health-related challenges faced by the members of the community, and offers genuine care, concern, and support with kindness and empathy as a response to those challenges.
What Strategic Planning Model Does your Chosen Organization Currently Use?
The members of the different levels of management at Island Urgent Care believe that conventional strategic planning models have rather grown outdated, which is actually the truth for most organizations . Because of this, they have been prompted to use a more contemporary or rather updated strategic planning model. Currently, it can be seen that the organization uses real time strategic planning wherein setting of goals or any particular plans to change large or small things in the company are done in a continuous or in a real-time manner, in order to keep up with the demands of the target markets and the dynamic movement of the market.
What is the Role of the Organization’s Mission, Vision, and Key Values to the Strategic Plan?
The mission and vision statements of the company and its key core values work linearly when it comes to the idea of successfully achieving the company’s long term strategic plans . The company’s vision would serve as the end point; its mission the milestones that the organization has to reach in order to reach larger milestones, and then later on its ultimate vision. Its key and core values are what guide the Island Urgent Care in successfully and continuously accomplishing its mission. All of these three work hand in hand for the company to attain its strategic plans. The company is highly known in the area as a reliable emergency medical care and service provider. It can be assumed that its strategic plan is to focus on this department and use it as a catalyst for or driver of further growth.
What is the Organizational Structure of the Chosen Organization?
Larger hospitals and medical centers tend to have more complex and sophisticated organizational structures . In Island Urgent Care’s case, it can still be considered as a small player in the healthcare and medical services industry and so the fact that it has a much simpler organizational structure can be completely justified.
There are three main divisions that we can use to outline Island Urgent Care’s organizational structure namely: the members of the Island Urgent Care Board; the members of the management and administrative team; and the members of the different divisions under the Services team (e.g. Emergency Services, Information Services, Therapeutic Services, Diagnostic Services, and Support Services, among others).
Who are the Current Key Leaders in Your Chosen Organization?
The current key leaders are the members of the board of directors as they are the ones that ultimately decide what strategic plans they would like to focus on and implement in the future. They also work closely with the lower levels of management and the medical practitioners from different departments.
What Change Management Model Does your Chosen Organization Use?
The change management model that Island Urgent Care currently uses is that of Lewin. This change management model has three stages: the unfreeze, transition, and the refreeze stage. The unfreeze stage can be described as the stage where the targets of the proposed change try to resist the change; the transition stage by the initiation of the change itself; and the refreeze stage by the target and key people’s acceptance of the change and its successful implementation.
How Much Involvement does the Governing Board have in Implementing Strategic Goals
The members of the hospital board work closely with the members of the management and administrative team, and at some point with the members of the special services team to come up with a clear and comprehensive set of strategic goals for the organization. As mentioned earlier, the Island Urgent Care’s number of years in the industry and its relative size are some of the factors that make it possible for members of executive and top management to work more closely with its individual departments.
In which case, the governing board has a high level of involvement not only in the implementation but also in the execution of the necessary steps and interventions for the organization to achieve its strategic goals. This type of setting is highly uncommon among larger medical and healthcare organizations because they often have a larger, and a more complex and sophisticated organizational structure—factors which make it almost impossible for them work very closely with the members of the middle and lower management .
What are the Organization’s Major Service Delivery and Support Activities in the Value Chain?
Island Urgent Care’s value chain works similar to the way how other primary and secondary healthcare and medical institutions work. There are two ways how they cater to the needs of their clients. Either their clients go directly to Island Urgent Care’s onsite location, or the company itself, through its various available emergency services, fetches the client from a specific location and is brought to on-site location.
Island Urgent Care’s main building is located just across one of the busiest places in Hawaii Kai, the Kahala Mall. Clients who want to pay a visit or to undergo medical and healthcare services that the organization offers may use the Kahala Mall as a landmark. Kahala Mall is located at 4211 Waialae Avenue, Honolulu Hawaii, United States of America. Island Urgent Care’s main building is just right across. This location is among the best for any medical or healthcare organization accessibility-wise.
Target Market, Programs and Services, Clinical Operations
When it comes to the organization’s target market, it would be safe to say that it includes patients with different adult illnesses (e.g. abdominal pain, allergic reactions, anemia, arthritis, and hypertension, among others); common illnesses (e.g. acid reflux, acne, bronchitis, colds, dehydration, and cuts and minor lacerations, among others; gynecological conditions (e.g. menstrual irregularities, vaginal bleeding, and sexually transmitted diseases, among others); pediatric conditions (e.g. childhood diseases, rashes, minor traumas and lacerations); who require rapid diagnostic tests and physical exams; and immediate ambulatory and emergency services.
Marketing
Marketing and advertisement of its services is something that Island Urgent Care has been paying increasingly more attention to lately, as evidenced by the establishment and maintenance of their own accounts in various social media platforms, and of their own website where clients can set and book their hospital visits, and even pay their bills in advance.
Billing
Patients and other types of clients that the Island Urgent Care caters to can pay their bills on site via the various clinic cashiers and counters, via bank deposits, via online bills payment mechanisms, and even via the clinic’s website.
Follow Up
Patients and clients can have their clinic visits properly scheduled by either calling the concerned person in the clinic—this can either be the physician, that physician’s secretary, or any one of the clinic’s receptionists, or by visiting the on-site location and properly scheduling for a future appointment for a follow-up or whatnot.
Strategic Resources
In Island Urgent Care’s case, their most valuable strategic resource would be their medical practitioners because they basically work as the back bone of the entire organization. Without them any proposed strategic plan or change management strategy would be virtually useless and also unattainable.
Organizational Culture
The management sees to it that all of the company’s key and core values are being observed well by all members of every organizational division because it sees them, the company’s key and core values, as essential elements to the company’s short and long term success in the industry, especially when we consider that it is a relatively new player and is still well within its early development years. Moreover, it would be these key and core values that would dictate the organization’s culture and may also serve as a major factor in the development of a brand or an organizational identity.
How does the organization use its value chain to help implement its strategic plan?
The organization uses its value chain to deliver the type of services and products that its clients, or the patients, expect from it. The patients then pay their bills according to the receipt of those expected products and resources. The end result is a sustainable business in the field of allied medicine.
References
Hunger, J., & Wheelen, T. (2007). Essentials of Strategic Management Fourth Edition. Pearson Prentice Hall.
Swayne, L., Duncan, J., & Ginter, P. (2012). Strategic Management of Health Care Organizations. John Wiley and Sons, 880.
Tsumoto, S. (2010). National Hospital Federation of Japan: Management Analysis Survey of Hospitals in Japan, Tokyo. Health and Welfare Statistics Association, 21.
Tsumoto, Y., & Tsumoto, S. (2010). Exploratory Univariate Analysis on the Characterization of a University Hospital: A Preliminary Step to Data Mining Based Hospital Management Using and Exploratory Univariate Analysis of a University Hospital. Department of Fundamental Nursing, 29.
