The hospital that will be reviewed within the framework of this paper is Bath Community Hospital located in Hot Springs, VA. From the information that was found it can be concluded that there are several issues that have to be addressed as soon as possible in order to stabilize the state of affairs. The Bath Community Hospital is a critical access type facility and provides numerous emergency services to its clients. At the same time, it is not clear whether the practitioners can receive lab results and track the patients’ data in electronic form. According to the reviews, this is a decent hospital that provides clients with decent services but its staff fails to deliver them appropriately.
If compared to other hospitals in the area, the Bath Community Hospital is not the best option available. For instance, there are Bedford Memorial Hospital (Bedford, VA), Carilion Stonewall Jackson Hospital (Lexington, VA), and Centra Health (Lynchburg, VA). All three hospitals mentioned above have EMR systems installed and are ready to store any electronic information that may be necessary to provide treatment to the patient. Overall, the services that are provided by the four hospitals that are reviewed within the framework of this paper are practically the same.
According to the review, one of the weakest sides of the Bath Community Hospital is team management. This leads to the idea that patient dissatisfaction may be linked to either an ineffective leadership style or poor team management (Groysberg & Slind, 2012). Accordingly, the core efforts should be made in the direction of improving the presence of collaboration and implementation of an EMR/EHR system that will fit the existing state of affairs and complement the staff’s efforts in terms of providing healthcare. So as to get a clearer picture of the issue, it may be necessary to conduct several surveys among the staff so as to make sure that the issue with leadership actually exists and there is a need to tackle it.
If I were a leader and a manager of the team at the chosen hospital, I would communicate chance from the point of view of transformational leadership. This approach is the most suitable when it comes to employing new initiatives and keeping both the staff and clients happy (Auer, Schwendimann, Koch, De Geest, & Ausserhofer, 2014; Marquis & Huston, 2015). This means that the implementation of new technologies at the hospital may transpire painlessly due to accurate management of human resources and adequate allocation of any other resources available to the given healthcare facility (Falkheimer, 2014). No other issues that are worth approaching were identified.
New Product or Service
The service that has to be implemented is the system of electronic health records that would function in collaboration with other hospitals from the neighboring areas. This innovation is critical because technologies develop fast and the hospital’s main priority should be to catch up with the pace and become a powerful competitor. Knowing that the majority of reviews coming from the hospital’s patients were positive, there is no doubt that an EMR would be a beneficial asset facilitating the lives of both healthcare providers and patients.
There are five core leadership strategies that can help the administration of the Bath Community Hospital to implement this technology successfully and increase the level of patient satisfaction. First of all, the management has to be able to define and communicate the vision in an appropriate way that can be comprehended by each member of the team (Marquis & Huston, 2015). Second, the staff should be recognized and encouraged by the administration so as the latter could motivate the team. Third, the whole strategy should be based on the passion towards accomplishing the hospital’s short- and long-term objectives. Without the willingness to approve new technologies, there is no point to implement them. The fourth strategy is to delegate and empower. This leadership strategy is expected to help the team grow professionally and collaborate more effectively (Leach & McFarland, 2014). Accordingly, the last strategy is to put emphasis on continued education. There is no possibility to implement any change without readiness, but the latter can only be achieved by means of training. Therefore, implementing a new technology at the hospital where staff is not ready for it may be a fatal fault.
The first management competency that is expected to improve the state of affairs at the Bath Community Hospital is the process of fostering teamwork. Healthcare providers that communicate inappropriately and disregard other members of the team may seriously hold back the progress and limit the opportunities of further development. Accordingly, the second competency is the ability to manage change. Without strong guidance, the hospital will get lost instead of advancing further (Stetler, Ritchie, Rycroft‐Malone, & Charns, 2014). The effectiveness of the whole organization may depend on the management strategy that was developed by the hospital’s administration.
There are two leadership competencies that currently seem to be disregarded at the Bath Community Hospital – efficient learning and self-organizing. The importance of these competencies can be defined by the overall impact of leadership on patient satisfaction (Arroliga, Huber, Myers, Dieckert, & Wesson, 2014). For instance, efficient learning may lead to improved collaboration and stronger ethics while the ability to self-organize may strengthen the hospital administration’s management possibilities.
References
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Leach, L., & McFarland, P. (2014). Assessing the professional development needs of experience nurse executive leader. Journal of Nursing Administration, 44(1), 51-62.
Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2015). Leadership roles and management functions in nursing: Theory and application (8th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins.
Stetler, C. B., Ritchie, J. A., Rycroft‐Malone, J., & Charns, M. P. (2014). Leadership for evidence‐based practice: Strategic and functional behaviors for institutionalizing EBP. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, 11(4), 219–226.
Auer, C., Schwendimann, R., Koch, R., De Geest, S., & Ausserhofer, D. (2014). How hospital leaders contribute to patient safety through the development of trust. Journal of Nursing Administration, 44(1), 23–29.
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