Identifying Resources
In studies, the rising cost of medical services emerged as a major problem affecting the health sector. The SWOT analysis conducted recommended a redesign of the healthcare payment system and the inculcation of an innovation culture to improve efficiencies and cost-effectiveness in the management of health services. Implementing these two proposals requires specific resources.
One of the resources needed is technical expertise to support research and development (R&D) initiatives aimed at supporting an innovative culture (McKelvey, 2016). Highly competent people would help to steer R&D processes to improve cost-effectiveness and efficiencies of healthcare services. Legislative support is also another resource needed to implement the strategies proposed. It appeals to the need to redesign the healthcare system to create a larger pool of funds for making payments.
This resource could be obtained through several means, including lobbying, because redesigning the healthcare payment system is a political issue that may require consultation with state health agencies (Robertson, Newby, & Walkom, 2016). Lastly, time is another resource that could help to implement the recommendations outlined above. This resource would give people adequate time to redesign the healthcare payment system as well as produce innovative products and services to reduce healthcare costs (Sare & Ogilvie, 2010).
How to Leverage Resources
There is a need to leverage resources that are already available to healthcare facilities to implement the proposed recommendations. For example, health organizations could align their current human capital goals with technical considerations in R&D to produce cost-effective products and services. This type of leveraging supports skills transfer and the preservation of institutional knowledge (Schlesinger, 2014). To hire the right personnel, new employees will be sourced through direct recruitment, as described by Schlesinger (2014). The pursuit of innovation would also support the quest for high-quality standards.
Prioritizing R&D processes to reduce the cost burden of healthcare is one trade-off that could be made to make sure there are enough resources for the strategic plan. Another trade-off would be to optimize the cost-efficiency of innovation processes at the expense of other considerations, such as design and performance. If there is a need for more capital to execute the strategic plan, state and federal governments will be consulted for supplementary funding through grants. The adoption of the above recommendations could take 3-5 years. The long incubation time for implementing innovative ideas and for policymakers to agree to reform the legal framework for making payments justifies this timeline. The desired vision is the creation of an affordable healthcare model.
Team Building and Addressing Barriers to Planned Change
Minimizing Barriers to Change
It is often difficult to implement changes because of rigidity in operational processes and human behavior. Particularly, human behavior is at the center of such resistance because some people are reluctant to accept new ways of operation because of conflicting interests (Weatherson, Gainforth, & Jung, 2017). The strategic plan outlined in paper 1 above is susceptible to such resistance because it involves the inculcation of a culture of innovation and the redesign of payment systems, both of which have serious ramifications to stakeholders in the healthcare sector (Weiss & Pollack, 2017).
Two barriers to change could affect the proposed strategic plan. One of them is cultural barriers, which may manifest when the proposed change does not align with stakeholders’ norms and values. For example, a change in the payment model could be resisted by insurance companies, which may be concerned about the creation of new levels of bureaucracy or a decrease in profitability. Poor leadership is another barrier to change. It often manifests when no central authority inspires people to realize a common vision (Marquis & Huston, 2017).
To overcome the cultural barriers identified above, there needs to be a greater tolerance for diversity among all stakeholders involved. Additionally, to overcome the poor leadership barrier, there needs to be proper communication regarding who should spearhead strategic change (Gerrish et al., 2011). Doing so would eliminate confusion among different agencies involved in the strategic planning process. This way, it would be easier to consolidate all plans associated with the stakeholder management process.
How to Promote Stakeholder Involvement
Stakeholder involvement is an important part of strategic planning (Weiss & Pollack, 2017). To address this issue, it is vital to develop a central steering committee, which comprises of representatives of different stakeholder groups, such as insurance companies, government agencies, patients, health care service providers, and health organizations. These stakeholders should participate in all stages of the strategic planning process. They should also be encouraged to become change champions by appealing to their individualistic needs. Therefore, they should be made to understand what they would gain by supporting the change management process.
Based on the importance of their participation in the process, I agree that systems evolve based on the changes in people’s behaviors. Weiss and Pollack (2017) who emphasize the importance of appealing to people’s potential to change their behaviors, as a prerequisite to realizing organizational change, support this view. This analogy relates to the specifics of the strategic plan because the proposals are people-focused.
Planning for Evaluation
Developing an Evaluation Plan
The effectiveness of the proposed changes to the strategic plan may be assessed by analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) in each category. In the financial segment, return on investments may be used to assess the effectiveness of the strategic plan. In the patient category, satisfaction levels could be used to understand the impact of the strategic plan on patients. Comparatively, in the innovation group, a survey of employee attitudes could be done to understand how well they are coping with the changes. Lastly, in the internal organizational perspective, the hours spent with patients would be the main criterion for assessing performance.
Timeline for Conducting Evaluation
As highlighted in paper 1, the proposed strategic plan would take between 3-5 years to complete. It is important to conduct annual evaluations to create enough time to make changes to the overall strategic plan. The steering committee should carry out these annual evaluations, which need to combine manual and automated evaluation processes. It is essential to undertake future evaluations because advancements in healthcare and uncertainties in the legal environment could fundamentally influence gains made in strategic planning. As insinuated by Donnelly, Shulha, Klinger, and Letts (2016), there is a need to implement these strategies by conducting surveys on patients who will state whether they support the changes made, or not.
The refreezing stage is the most important part of the evaluation process because it aligns new changes with stakeholders’ values and norms (D’Ostie-Racine, Dagenais, & Ridde, 2016). Furthermore, it makes room for organizations to solidify new changes made (Høstgaard, Bertelsen, & Nøhr, 2017). One strategy to facilitate refreezing is to adopt a new identity for the organization. This identity would be a safeguard to new system-level changes. Lastly, another strategy would be to nurture a culture of change in the organization to improve stakeholder buy-in.
Insights Gained
Based on the information highlighted in this paper, the evaluation process is a succinct model that is characterized by different stages of review. According to Sridharan and Nakaima (2011), these phases strengthen the strategic planning process. Other elements of the strategic planning process that may be useful to the evaluation process are the evaluation of the respondents’ strategic needs and sources of data, which will be used to undertake the analysis.
References
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