Research Proposal
HealthPartners merged with Park Nicollet Health Services of St. Louis Park in Minnesota in 2013 (HealthPartners, 2014). The leaders’ focus on the cooperation strategy is explained with references to expectations regarding the improvement of the delivery system and expansion of services in the community. The selected cooperation strategy resulted in the significant change in strategic directions of both organizations that focused on integration of separate cultures and development of the new system of delivering services (Isham, Zimmerman, Kindig, & Hornseth, 2013, p. 1447; Zismer, 2013, p. 168).
Thus, the rational for the development of the project is associated with the necessity to examine the influences of the merger on the changes in the healthcare organizations’ strategic direction (Swayne, Duncan, & Ginter, 2009, p. 221). The project’s objective is to explore how the shift in strategies caused by the merger of HealthPartners with Park Nicollet Health Services can affect the quality of the provided services, the quality of administration, and the organizations’ financial position.
From this perspective, the project will include the review of the theoretical information on the strategic management, organizational changes, and mergers; the research of the factual and corporate information regarding the activities of HealthPartners; and the analysis of the data to conclude about the role of the strategic change for HealthPartners’ operations within the industry.
Potential Obstacles and Challenges
The success of the project completion depends on the quality of the available resources. In order to analyze the strategic change occurred in HealthPartners in detail, it is important to overcome the obstacles associated with the limited access to the factual data. The information on the policies developed to administer the organizational change is available at the HealthPartners website. Still, there is the lack of the reliable information on the organization’s accomplishments after the merger because the recent data is necessary for the analysis (Chreim, Williams, & Coller, 2012, p. 215; Zuckerman, 2011, p. 3).
The data on the quality and cost assessment for the year of 2014 is available at the HealthPartners website, but problems can be experienced with analyzing the data efficiently and with the focus on details in order to draw supported conclusions regarding the success of the merger and associated strategic changes (Zuckerman, 2011, p. 5). In addition, much attention should be paid to the analysis of the role of the change for the community members as the clients of the organization because of possible shifts in the character and number of provided services and proposed products.
References
Chreim, S., Williams, B., & Coller, K. (2012). Radical change in healthcare organization. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 26(2), 215-236.
HealthPartners. (2014). Web.
Isham, G., Zimmerman, D., Kindig, D., & Hornseth, G. (2013). HealthPartners adopts community business model to deepen focus on nonclinical factors of health outcomes. Health Affairs, 32(8), 1446–1452.
Swayne, L. E., Duncan, W. J., & Ginter, P. M. (2009). Strategic management of health care organizations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Zismer, D. (2013). How might a reforming U.S. healthcare marketplace threaten balance sheet liquidity for community health systems? Journal of Healthcare Management, 58(3), 168-172.
Zuckerman, A. (2011). Healthcare mergers and acquisitions: Strategies for consolidation. Frontiers of Health Services Management, 27(4), 3-12.