Operations Management Overview
Introduction
Mater Dei is one of the leading hospitals when it comes to the provision of social services to the community; the members of the community who benefit from this services are those whose medical conditions do not allow them to be productive and provide for their families and those whose families cannot provide for their medical treatment costs. Its social service department helps the society a lot by providing for the needs of the community members and that of their families and network. Mater Dei strives to provide the best healthcare there is to its patients to help them overcome the challenges brought upon them by their medical conditions and also to help them overcome the psychosocial problems as a result of those conditions. This presentation aims at incorporating the McKinsey 7-S model to help analyze the problems faced by the acute medical ward through a fishbone analysis. Through the analysis, the organization would then be able to measure their performance indicators through a management framework to help improve the quality of healthcare service delivery in the acute wards.
McKinsey 7-S model
McKinsey model was invented in 1980 by the consultants working for McKinsey consultants, an international business consulting company that assists businesses in implementing their business ideas and evaluates the effectiveness of business decisions (Jurevicius, 2013). The consultants who came up with the evaluation model are Tom Peters, Julien Phillips, and Robert Waterman (Jurevicius, 2013). The consultants got assistance from other experts, namely Anthony Athos, and Richard Pascale (Jurevicius, 2013). The model has since been widely used by business practitioners and academicians as a strategic planning tool. The application of the model can be used to achieve different goals; first, it is an effective tool while effecting change in an organization. It also assists in the implementation of new business strategies (Jurevicius, 2013). The tools can also be used as a measure to find out or forecast the change that might be anticipated in an area of business in the future. Lastly, the McKinsey model can also be used in case of a merger to ensure it is performed smoothly.
The McKinsey model is a tool developed to analyze internal elements that affect organizational performance. The internal elements include organizational strategy and structure, norms, and values in the organization, staff and organizational management, and sourcing of the required skills (Jurevicius, 2013). By using the 7-S model, the internal aspects are checked for proper alignment and if they are implemented in a way that allows the organization to achieve its goals and objectives. The tool remains a widely used planning tool in strategic planning. Its main focus remains on the human resource management to enhance the performance of an organization while slightly deviating away from the conventional strategies of mass production which include allocation of capital, management of organizational infrastructure and equipment as a means to achieving greater performance in an organization.
Application of the McKinsey 7-S model
The seven organizational aspects are divided into two sections, the soft S and the Hard S. Soft S’s include management style, skills, human resource, and shared values and norms. The style in the Soft S’s is a representation of how the company is run and managed by the top-level management, their interpersonal relationship, their actions and how they value symbolism; it is the style of management the organization uses. The next S, which stands for staff, is the human resource in the organization, how they are sourced, trained, and incorporated into the organization. Skills refer to the productivity level of the employees, their competence and capabilities to conform to organizational objectives and goals. Lastly, on the soft S’s, there exist shared values which are the core of McKinsey’s model; they are the norms that dictate the organizational culture. The norms act as guidance to the behavior required of employees, and thus it is at the core of every organization.
On the Hard S’s, there are three main aspects, organizational strategy, system, and structure. Strategy refers to a plan set in motion by an organization that gives it a competitive advantage over its competitors (Jurevicius, 2013). The organizational strategy is what helps to improve productivity when it is incorporated with a strong vision, organizational value, and mission statement and is considered to be long term. The strategy is, however, considered ineffective when it is an island; it, therefore, should be incorporated with the other six S’s to be deemed effective because it is the other aspects that help an organization develop a strong strategy. The structure, on the other hand, refers to how the organization is arranged, the organizational structure. The structure indicates the communication channel, the responsibilities at each level of management, and who is in charge of operations and at what level (Jurevicius, 2013). The final aspect of the hard S’s is the system, which indicates the daily operations of the organization and the decision-making system used by the organization. Systems are pivotal when the organization is effecting change management.
The operations strategy mission, vision, and objectives of Mater Dei
The mission and vision statement is for the social work offered at Mater Dei to provide a holistic service to inpatients regardless of age and those having psychosocial challenges as a result of their health conditions and situations. The objectives of Mater Dei are assessing the following conditions of patients to help decide for them the best care plan that can improve their condition, creating awareness about available community services, and also give an account of information on the available community resources and how to get access to the services. In addition to that, Mater Dei aims to liaise with the relevant authority to help provide and refer the available resources in the society to help in the continuity of patient care. Lastly, Mater Dei has the objective of offering social support to patients and their family members as it will the patients to cope up with their current medical conditions and health situations. The reason for working together with the patient’s network is to provide a detailed insight into what the patient requires and to make sure everything is done as planned and according to the schedule set by the hospital.
Service overview of Mater Dei
Mater Dei offers social services to inpatients admitted to the hospital wards to help meet the needs of the admitted patients. The social workers at Mater Dei are linked to most departments at the hospital, which include the admissions ward, the surgical department, which include orthopedic surgery, gynecology department, emergency departments (ED), and pediatric department; the children’s department. The social workers are tasked with assessing and attending to patients’ needs to help in the facilitation of discharge and improve the quality of service during their stay in the wards. At the early stages of patient admission, a social worker is requested; this gives the social worker ample time to assess the needs of the patient and also have adequate time to facilitate discharge and provide for the required needs and that of those belonging to the patient’s network. The patients then give referrals to Mater Dei. The groups that mater Dei intervenes to assist include adolescents, the elderly in the community, minors, and adults too. The patients whose cases are not serious or can be handled through home care are usually kept in acute medical wards.
The Fishbone Analysis of Mater Dei Acute Medical Ward
The fishbone analysis focuses on the inefficiency experienced at the acute ward by Mater Dei from four perspectives; it focuses on the patients and the healthcare providers as the people involved in the model, and the methods used to provide quality healthcare to the patients (What is a Fishbone Diagram (Ishikawa Cause and Effect Diagram)? 2020). It also focuses on the environment the healthcare services are provided in, which is the acute medical wards at Mater Dei (What is a Fishbone Diagram (Ishikawa Cause and Effect Diagram)? 2020). Lastly, the analysis of the ward focuses on the resources provided by Mater Dei and how the resources are allocated to each patient and their network to help meet their needs. The use of the four pillars makes fishbone analysis effective and efficient when having an insight into healthcare services as it focusses on the core of healthcare services, which include the patients, healthcare providers, and the resources for healthcare providers.
Mater Dei social services help to meet the needs of patients, some of the patients who do not meet the criteria for admission; that is, patients with less serious medical cases or prefer homecare, are placed in acute medical wards (Medical Ward 1, 2020). The wards hold them for some time before it can be decided on what type of care is suitable for them (Medical Ward 1, 2020). Those with serious illnesses are referred to as admission wards for specialized and personalized care. Some of the patients in the acute wards withhold information about their conditions, thus creating a pathway for the wrong diagnosis. A wrong diagnosis means that the healthcare provider is in the way for blames; it also means that the social service worker to be assigned to the patient will be given false information. The cycle continues, and in the end, it is the acute medical ward system, which is declared ineffective.
The patient-centered approach: The service quality model
The service quality model is the best model that can be used to create an environment where patients feel more cared for and focused on, especially in acute medical wards. The need for a service quality model is driven by the need of a hospital to meet the exact needs of a patient from a patient’s view while also providing a professional care service to the patient (Globenko and Sianova, 2012). Most patients view physical consultation and the provision of information about the quality of service they need in healthcare (Abbasi-Moghaddam et al., 2019). There should, however, be an emphasis on how to disclose information to patients and how to get it from them. A patient-centered approach should be carried out in a way that is in the best interest of the patient even it does not suit the patient. According to Endeshaw (2020), service quality models should be genric and dynamic to help meet the ever-changing needs of patients.
The performance measures and the key performance objectives
Mater Dei plans should incorporate the following performance objectives in the acute wards to help improve healthcare service delivery. The organization should make sure that the number of readmissions is reduced by providing proper diagnostic procedures and administering proper treatment to the patients. The acute medical department should initiate an education program that teaches patients about the importance of disclosing information regarding the medical background and also that of the process of diagnosis at the acute medical wards. The education should be conducted on the patient’s networks, which includes the relatives. Thirdly, in this era of coronavirus, the acute medical department should enforce the values of self-protection to avoid infecting others, which includes patients and healthcare providers. Finally, mandatory training should be conducted for the staff at least once annually on the improvement of the relationship between patients and healthcare to create trust on the side of the patients.
The generic performance management framework.
The generic performance management framework is that which is built upon the focus on fiver key pillars required for the provision of quality healthcare within the acute medical ward at Mater Dei. Performance management is required to be generic because healthcare provision is a dynamic service that is never static. Different patients have different traits, and all of them cannot be handled in the same way. The pillars that Mater Dei needs to focus on having a generic performance management system include; coming up with guiding principles that define the purpose of the acute ward, define success in their own to know what they intend to achieve, come up with ways by which they are going to achieve their defined success. They should then analyze their performance to check whether their defined success has been achieved and, if not, think of alternative means of achieving their success or what they ought to do differently. A generic performance management approach will shift the discussion away from right and wrong and from effective and ineffective in healthcare provision.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the performance objectives
For the reduction of readmission of patients, the acute ward should be well equipped with sanitization booths to prevent reinfection. In addition to that, healthcare providers should provide the most accurate diagnosis to help in providing a viable solution. The challenge using this KPI is that the resources required need funding, and it would take a while before the funds are approved, so it would be a long term KPI that cannot be affected in the short term. To educate the patients, Mater Dei should provide the necessary environment for the education of the patients by hiring professional healthcare providers to help educate them. These KPI also faces a challenge since not all patients are literate and willing to be educated. The information should be provided before treatment. Lastly, random inspections should be carried out to check whether the healthcare providers at Mater Dei are following the self-inspection rules and if they are adhering to them. The challenge this KPI faces is the use of a standardized inspection method, yet the acute ward is a mixture of treatment procedures that require different self-inspection rules. The inspection rules should, therefore, be flexible to accommodate all the treatment procedures.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the challenges faced by the acute medical ward at Mater Dei, as identified by the fishbone analysis, are best solved by a generic performance management method with a patient-centered approach that focusses on the improvement of service of healthcare provision. The performance management method used is generic because different patients have different needs, and even if it would have been the same patient visiting all the time, then the particular patients’ traits would be dynamic, thus posing a challenge. A set standard would not be suitable for the evaluation as it inhibits flexibility that is required to face different challenges in healthcare provision. Focusing on the soft S’s would give Mater Dei a competitive advantage that other healthcare service providers do not possess in the healthcare industry.