Introduction
Today’s dynamic healthcare environment poses a major challenge for hospital administration and senior management. They recognize the idea that an organization that enables its resources to work in an efficient and effective manner would do so through the effective management of competing priorities. In strategic management, resource allocation encompasses a plan that facilitates the utilization of available resources to achieve the ultimate organizational goals. Some of the resources at my healthcare facility include hospital equipment, drugs, time, the nursing staff, physicians, and hospital space. This essay discusses the overall resource allocation experience at the facility.
Ways of Managing Resource Allocation
The central resource managers are the administration who work in hand with the HR department. The following are some of the ways that this team manages the resource allocation process. First, they evaluate the operational effectiveness of each resource and department to establish a comprehensive management strategy. This step involves the periodic evaluation of all resources to make decisions on resource priority. It also involves the consolidation of similar resources under one departmental head to ensure the effective use of resources. For instance, nurses specializing in midwifery would work closely with the nursing supervisor in charge of the Maternal and Child Health Unit (MCH).
The next step involves the use of tools and systems to identify tasks, allocate resources, prevent over-allocation, and mitigate burnout. This step also involves budget approval, start and finish times, work flexibility among others. It would determine the amount of resources required to align individual departments with the facility’s strategic objectives. For instance, upon the identification of tasks at the MCH, the management then determines the number of staff that can run the unit in ways that effectively achieves its objectives (Petrou & Wolstenholme, 2010).
Third, the management considers the extent to which the facility can delay tasks until the nursing staff and physicians have adequate resources. The delay aids in dividing tasks and hiring additional staff members for effective task execution. Fourth, it outsources some of the routine activities of organizations and individuals specializing in the area. For instance, it partners with local agencies to help offer data processing and culinary services (Kluge, 2007).
Furthermore, the administration trains its departmental heads to execute and delegate duties in ways that ensure the timely allocation of resources. The support, as well as less-experienced members attached to each department, have a vital function in completing tasks that fit their job jurisdiction. Otherwise, they need to be in the presence of an experienced staff member should they perform complex tasks beyond their experience (Kluge, 2007).
Finally, they manage hospital suppliers through a comprehensive analysis of material in between processes. This step requires that they gather expert input from independent consultants who help offer alternative solutions to inventory backlogs. They also offer recommendations on the various ways of rectifying issues that deal with late and poor quality deliveries (Sheldon & Smith, 2000).
Systems and Processes Involved
There exist a variety of systems and processes that aid in solving the resource allocation problem. However, my organization uses a manual approach in its resource allocation strategy. Here, it has identified and defined three allocation systems, namely capacity-oriented, history-oriented, and role-oriented. Through the capacity-oriented system, the management offers a mechanism that allocates resources to tasks by matching their specific requirements. Nurses, for instance, work in departments that characterize their specialty and level of experience. The system also grants tasks to individuals based on their capabilities and availability of performance.
The history-based system included the use of historical information of task execution and resource occupancy to determine the allocation criteria. For instance, departments known to attract huge client flows receive the largest available spaces and staff members to avoid work backlogs. Finally, role-based allocation attempts to assign resources to tasks based on their position within the facility as well as their relationship with other resources. In this case, the administration attaches entry-level nurses to their experienced counterparts. Ideally, these individuals have a better chance of executing complex tasks than their inexperienced counterparts (Cummings & Bruni, 2010).
Determination of Resource Allocation and Distribution
The following are some of the ways my organization uses to determine resource allocation and distribution. First, the facility uses individual and organizational merit to allocate some of the scare resources. Employees see this as a reward system of a kind. The idea here is that the rewards go to departments in order of productivity, ability, and effort. However, the organization limits such resources to promotions, salary increments, and bonuses. This allocation system fails to work in the involvement of organizational necessities such as patient sleeping spaces, medicines, and hospital equipment. In such environments, only a few individuals argue for denying departments their rights to medical equipment because they are less productive (Sheldon & Smith, 2000).
Second, the organization may exercise allocation of resources by considering social worth. This form of allocation takes a practical stance towards resources. According to Sheldon and Smith (2000), it helps health care organizations direct resources to tasks that appear to have a significant contribution to the common good of the patients. Ideally, healthcare resources should move towards a utilization process that considers the greatest and the neediest number of tasks. The best criteria for such allocations would consider age, sex, rank, expertise, and severity of conditions. In the hospital environment, socially conscious allocations consider the urgency of situations among primary stakeholders. It would be socially vital to allocate the highest number of nurses in departments that have a high flow of patients to reduce potential backloads. Such allocations only break down when the management ignores the need for basic human rights (Sheldon & Smith, 2000).
Third, my organization considers need when determining resource allocation and distribution strategies. Mooney, Jan, and Wiseman (2002) state that this allocative mechanism shares the view that every individual has a right to some amount of any given resource. Ideally, every patient has a right to access health care as well as seek consultancy from trained health practitioners. In my organization, the distributive mechanism is visible when the administration uses available funds to recruit additional personnel for a department where staff members experience overwhelming demand. The allocation by needs mechanism would attract a limitation to only those resources that truly meet their intended purposes (Mooney, et al., 2002).
The final distributive and allocation mechanism happens by random and equal assignment. According to Kluge (2007), this process encompasses the idea that the organization can find no unbiased and rational way to allocate and distribute its resources. The facility employs this method when others fail to meet their intended targets. The most recent method here happened through balloting. It was one of simplest allocation methods the facility used to allocate limited office spaces in a newly-built administrative unit. This method, however, breaks down in the event of the existence of a unit that is too small to make a difference. For instance, it would take help as such to divide drugs into small doses during a bacterial outbreak. Such a move would, instead, make individual doses too small to benefit needy patients (Kluge, 2007).
Recommendations for Effective Resource Allocation
As a future administrator at the facility, I would introduce a computer algorithm to help in effective resource distribution and allocation. Cummings and Bruni (2010) state that one of the essential reasons for the execution of such processes is to offer the ability to forecast and plan the best resource utilization methods. However, it is only appropriate that this algorithm works as part of the manual resource allocation process. I recognize the fact that administrators describe resources as agents that play a vital role in task execution (Cummings & Bruni, 2010). Therefore, the following are some of the additional changes I will initiate as an aid in the resource allocation procedure.
First, I figure that visibility is vital in the entire distribution process. Thus, I will initiate a system that strikes a balance between team motivation and task performance. This move ensures that I have a specific view of all the available resources and tasks within the organization. The ability to use both the manual and computer algorithm would enable planning and scheduling as a powerful process in the diagnosis of potential pitfalls. I would carry out this plan with the perception that it is the hospital staff that helps metrics identify areas that need urgent attention (Petrou & Wolstenholme, 2010).
Second, I recognize that collaboration increases chances of productivity. Given this notion, I know that collaborative resource allocation helps reduce errors and foster creativity. It would be important to use a tool that includes everyone in the allocation process. Here, every member of the facility feels important regarding offering feedback and ideas on recent allocation. A collaborate and transparent environment open up the hospital environment for subsequent improvements in cases of poor allocation strategies (Kluge, 2007).
References
Cummings, M., & Bruni, S. (2010). Human-automated planner collaboration in complex resource allocation decision support systems. Journal of Intelligent Decision Technologies, 4 (2), 101-114.
Kluge, E. (2007). Resource Allocation in Healthcare: Implications of Models of Medicine as a Profession. Medscape General Medicine Journal, 9 (1).
Mooney, G., Jan, S., & Wiseman, V. (2002). Staking a claim for claims: a case study of resource allocation in Australian Aboriginal health care. Journal of Social Science and Medicine, 54 (11), 1657-67.
Petrou, S., & Wolstenholme, J. (2010). A review of alternative approaches to healthcare resource allocation. Journal of Pharmacoeconomics, 18 (1), 33-43.
Sheldon, T. A., & Smith, P. (2000). Equity in the allocation of health care resources. Journal of Health Economics, 9 (7), 571-574.
