Strategic management offers a basis for running all categories of modern-day organizations. In the health care organizations, strategic management is a fundamental part of management, as it assists health care organizations to survive a variety of external forces. Strategic management also helps health care organizations to balance the external environment and the internal environment (Trinh & O'Connor, 2002).
For instance, over the past years, strategic management has slowly helped healthcare organizations to stand on their own by focusing on ways of raising funds to run their operations, buy their own equipment and stop outsourcing, and monitor the output of all the staffs to ensure quality services. This has really boosted the growth and development of healthcare organizations, therefore, ensuring the delivery of quality and affordable services. Strategic management has also ensured that all the staffs in healthcare organizations are periodically reviewed so that there are no mishaps in the delivery of services.
In addition, strategic management has helped to ensure that the machines and equipment used in healthcare organizations are of good variety and are cost effective. It has also been able to improve the level of research involved in healthcare organizations and for that matter pooled and solicited funds for the same. With this trend, we can be assured of better healthcare services in the near future (Mick & Wise, 1996).
There are several benefits involved by incorporating strategic management in healthcare organizations. For example, strategic management has helped the healthcare organizations to cope with the changing environment, get ready for the future, reduce dependence on outsiders, and improve the overall management, so as to enable better performance. For this reason, it would be impossible for healthcare organizations to survive without strategic management. They would have perished a long time ago for being unable to adjust to the changing business environment (Zajac, Kraatz, & Bresser, 2000).
However, many resources need to be assigned to strategic management, thereby making it a very costly affair. Strategic management also involves interruption of operations, which further leads to resistance and consequently reducing the adaptive capacity of the organization (Cleverley & Harvey, 1992).
In terms of changes in the healthcare industry, strategic management has brought about several phases of development. It has practically evolved from a sole practitioner to standardization committees, product evaluation committees, value analysis committees and to value teams. The most important of these stages is the value team, which (just as the name suggests) derives its strength lies from the numbers. Value teams are also the most important phase of the healthcare organization since they aim at increasing the quality of services. However, most healthcare institutions have not reached this stage, as it involves a myriad of activities.
Value teams involve a lot of value engineering and analysis by the strategic management team to ensure that each single activity in the healthcare organization is running smoothly and to perfection. This also requires very highly skilled personnel, equipment and machinery, time and resources to ensure everything is at bay. This is important because it makes healthcare organizations more accessible, affordable, transparent, confidential, and able to offer quality services whenever need be.
In conclusion, strategic management has been beneficial to the healthcare industry because it has brought along better delivery of services and overreliance on third parties when delivering health care services. For this reason, strategic management has brought about something akin to a revolution in the management of healthcare organizations.
References
Cleverley, W., & Harvey, R. (1992). Critical Strategies for Successful Rural Hospitals. Health Care Management Review, 27-33.
Mick, S., & Wise, C. (1996). Health Care Manage Rev. Downsizing and Financial Performance in Rural Hospitals, 16-25.
Trinh, H. Q., & O'Connor, S. J. (2002). Helpful or Harmful? The Impact of Strategic Change on the Performance of U.S. Urban Hospitals. HSR HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH, 143-169.
Zajac, E., Kraatz, M., & Bresser, R. (2000). Modelling the Dynamics of Strategic Fit: A Normative Approach to Strategic Change. Strategic Management Journal, 421-530.
