DCM2 TASK 2

docx

School

Western Governors University *

*We aren’t endorsed by this school

Course

C200

Subject

Health Science

Date

Jan 9, 2024

Type

docx

Pages

Uploaded by c88bates

1 DCM2 TASK 2: ORGANIZATION AND LEADERSHIP EVALUATION Cassandra Marker Western Governors University Ann Leary January 29, 2023

2 DCM2 Task 2: Organization and Leadership Evaluation This paper will review an organization, referred to as the agency. It discusses the history, background, mission, vision, purpose and objectives. Additionally, this paper will review the agency’s top nursing leader, referred to as Peppa, and will go through her impact on culture of the facility. Later it will review Peppa’s strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations related to a chosen leadership theory. This paper will also conduct a SWOT analysis of the facility, to identify some of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Organization description To care for and improve people’s lives. This is what the agency strives for. The agency is a small 20 bed inpatient hospital that has grown significantly over the past 2 years. The background goes back 35 years, to when the agency became one of the first free standing emergency department. The agency is a satellite site to a larger parent agency. Located in an urban area, the agency was built to give the surrounding community quicker access to emergency care. At the time it was built, the closest medical facility was a thirty plus minute drive. The parent agency chose to build an emergency department in hopes to capitalize on being the only presence in the area. The history of the agency evolved over time from a singular 19 bed emergency department into a medical plaza that offered a large scale of outpatient services. In 2021 the agency opened as a full-service hospital containing 20 inpatient beds. The hospital is primarily a surgical based hospital, with focus on orthopedics and plastics. Inpatient services consist of medical surgical admissions only. There are limited consultative services, which requires the agency to transfer a lot of patients out to the parent hospital. Inpatient volume is driven by the operating room, and emergency department. The agency expanded the pharmacy services to support the operating room, inpatient, and emergency department needs during

3 business hours. During off hours, any pharmacy needs are supported by the parent hospital. Upon opening, the radiology services have expanded significantly to support the inpatient needs, offering Xray, CT, MRI, ultrasound, and nuclear medicine studies. The emergency department continues to evolve, going from 19 beds to 15 beds as it retired its semiprivate rooms. The mission of this agency is to improve upon and care for people’s lives. Exceptional healthcare in all forms. It does this with its vision of bringing healing to all. The way the agency executes its mission and vision is by operating with a set of ideals and values. Leading by example through excellence, respect, accountability, compassion, and integrity. The purpose of promoting these ideals allows the agency to deliver exemplary care and grow as a hospital. Continued growth of the hospital while abiding by the mission statement is the overall goal of the agency. The goals of the hospital are to maintain patient experience scores above the 75 th percentile. This ensures the patients are happy and satisfied with their care, and fulfills their mission. The agency has goals to continue to expand their inpatient services, adding an intensive care unit, and 3 additional inpatient floors. By meeting their high patient experience goal, they are able to utilize word of mouth to help drive volume, which will help the goals of expanding the hospital. The operating room structure has goals to obtain more surgeons, and build out 2 additional operating rooms to allow for higher numbers of surgeries and admissions. Increased volume, growth, and patient satisfaction is what the agency will always continue working towards. Leadership Practices The administrative director of clinical operations, Peppa, oversees the entire agency. She is responsible for all nursing and operation practices. Each unit has a manager or director to manage the specifics of their unit, and Peppa manages the department leaders. One leadership practice of Peppa is holding weekly one on one meetings with each manager or director. This

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

4 practice is a quick review of the state of the department. What the current goals are, where your department stands, what wins have you had over the last week, and what barriers you are facing. For example, Peppa will discuss length of stay times with the emergency department manager. The goal is 150 minutes. If the patient average for the previous week is longer than 150 minutes, what caused the delays, and what is being addressed. Peppa will offer support if needed, or advise on any next steps that aren’t already being taken. This is a leadership practice because it helps the department leader identify the goals of the agency, and supports them in how to achieve them. Another leadership practice that Peppa does is monthly recognition of the employees within the agency. This is recognition given out to any employee, in any department. It highlights something positive, comments that have been passed along, or achievements. For example, Peppa wrote a hand written note to one of the emergency department nurses for a great catch in advocating for a pediatric patient that had the wrong fluid order in. The note was mailed to the employee’s house and they were able to receive that personal recognition while they were at home and not at work. This is a leadership practice because it in-stills confidence in the employee and keeps them engaged in their work environment. The last leadership practice that Peppa practices is a twice a week facility leadership huddle. This is an opportunity for all the leaders of every unit to come together in one combined spot to report out on outstanding issues and their state of the department. A specific example is every Tuesday at the agency, all the leaders meet in the ER waiting room and report off individually about what’s going on in their unit, and updates. The leaders interact with each other, they are able to form relationships, and work together to solve problems. This is a

5 leadership practice because it promotes collaboration between units and team building, to work towards the common goals of the agency. Effects of current leader on culture The culture at the agency has gone up and down over the past few years. When Peppa assumed the role as administrative director, you saw the culture shift in a positive way, specifically in the emergency department. By implementing the leadership practice of weekly one on one leader meetings, Peppa set a standard of accountability and support for the department. By meeting with the department leader regularly, it allowed for long standing items, and low hanging fruit to be addressed, which allowed the department to become more successful in its goal. By meeting goals and being successful, the department was able to maintain a positive culture around success. A specific example of this is when the department maintained patient experience scores above the 75 th percentile for 4 straight quarters. The department was recognized for their success at a division meeting among all high-ranking executives. This was positive reinforcement for the department leader, and motivated them to keep succeeding, and in turn is disseminated down to the individual nurses who provided the care for high-ranking scores. This empowered a shift to positive successful culture The practice of personal handwritten recognition from Peppa also contributed to a positive culture shift because it allows for employees to be seen and recognized by someone other than their direct leader. They feel valued within the agency, like their commitment matters. When the emergency room nurses started receiving recognition from someone other than their leader, they felt like they were contributing to the new hospital in one way or another, and not just existing within an isolated department. Feeling like they belonged gave them a sense of motivation to continue working toward positive outcomes.

6 Practicing twice a week leadership huddles where all the leaders get together and report out has also impacted the culture in a positive way because it has allowed everyone to form a relationship with each other. For example, the emergency department has been able to connect and network with the radiology teams. Two departments that work together, but typically don’t interact. With the weekly leader huddles, they have been able to get to know each other on professional and personal levels and discuss ways they can work together to help each other. Increased team work and collaboration has shifted the culture of the emergency department to increasingly positive as they continue to partner with other departments around the hospital. SWOT Analysis Below will review an in-depth analysis of the agency, consisting of 2 strengths, 2 weaknesses, 2 opportunities, and 2 threats. Current Strengths A current strength of the agency is its culture. This strength is best described as a high performing, connected, compassionate facility invested in its patients. It empowers its employees to advocate for themselves, their patients, and their facility. For example, the agency has a hospital wide unit practice council that consistently organizes events, suggests practice changes, and recognizes employee throughout the facility. This is a strength because it allows the employees to be engaged, make choices that directly affect them, and in turn are more productive within the agency. Another current strength of the agency is the patient experience score. This strength is described as quality of the patient’s hospital visit based on the care provided by the nurses, physicians, and ancillary departments. For example, the agency has a goal to stay in or above the 75 th percentile. With all departments averaged they remain in the 82 nd percentile, well above goal.

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

7 This speaks to the quality of care each member provides to each patient, consistently. This is a current strength because exemplary care ensures patients will return to the facility each time, they need medical care or procedures committed. They will market the facility with word of mouth, and help with sustained and increased growth. Current Weaknesses A current weakness of the agency is the critical care capacity for patients. This weakness is described as a lack of ability to admit and treat patients that fall under certain criteria, which requires them to be transferred to a different facility that can assume care. For example, if a diabetic patient presents to the emergency department needing critical blood sugar and electrolyte management, that patient does not meet admission criteria and must be sent to a larger facility that properly manage their care. This is a weakness because it affects the agency’s ability to maintain their volume and loses financial component of the patient’s admission. A second weakness of the agency continued staffing vacancies. This is described as the inability to fill critical positions within the agency. For example, during the pandemic the agency lost several ultrasound technicians. This has continued through the current date, and their positions are being backfilled by contract labor. This is a weakness for the agency because contract labor is expensive, affects your revenue, and doesn’t provide engaged employees. This all can affect your productivity, culture, and engagement. Current opportunities A current opportunity the agency has is to expand its surgical specialties. This opportunity is described as needing more specialized surgeons in order to expand the surgical program. For example, the agency focuses on orthopedic and plastic services. To expand they need to recruit bariatric surgeons, gastric surgeons, urology surgeons, and ENT surgeons. By

8 recruiting them and building a more robust surgical program it allows the agency to develop and expand its operating rooms, allow more options for the community, and increase its surgical admission opportunities. A second opportunity for the agency is community awareness. This opportunity can be described as making all the surrounding communities and business aware that the building has expanded and is a full medical hospital. For example, there are several retirement communities surrounding the agency. Marketing and promoting the agency will bring in more patients, and expand the patient population. This is an opportunity because it will increase revenue and allow for increased popularity and growth. Current threats A current threat for the agency is competitor recruitment for both nursing and physicians. This threat can be described as a significant risk to the workforce of the agency. For example, the competing facilities are offering upwards of a thirty-thousand-dollar sign on bonus for nurses to switch to their facility. If the nursing staff from the agency chose to pursue that opportunity it would cripple the ability of the agency to staff its hospital. You can’t run a hospital without nursing, so the threat could be detrimental to the agency. A second threat for the agency is supply chain production. This threat is described by the vulnerability of a hospital not being able to obtain the supplies it needs. For example, if surgeons can’t get the appropriate saw blades for their procedures, they risk having to cancel their surgeries or opt to utilize a substitution that may not be of the same quality and could compromise surgical outcomes. This is a threat not only for the risk of not being able to complete surgeries for patients, but can also comprise quality surgical metrics. If surgeons start

9 encountering bad outcomes due to unavailable or unfamiliar products, it could drive volume to competing facilities and result in a loss of revenue for the agency. Leadership Analysis Below will analyze Peppa’s leadership strength, weaknesses, and recommendations based on the transactional leadership theory. Transactional leadership theory is based on the leader and follower relationship with transactions that fuel performance. Leadership strengths The first strength Peppa exhibits within transactional leadership theory is innovation. The theory itself is based on transactions and ability to reward or provide feedback and reset in order to achieve goals. This isn’t always a straightforward process. Peppa is able to think out of the box when it comes to different ways of motivating people. For example, the agency has a reward system where employees can be awarded points. To achieve a compliance goal of completing certain online learning modules, Peppa offered a large number of points to the first five people who completed all of their modules. This gave the employees an incentive to work towards, and in exchange Peppa maintained a high compliance rate. Another strength Peppa embodies within transactional leadership theory is the clear communication of expectations. Transactional leadership theory operates with the idea that the followers are working towards achieving specific goals. They can’t work towards those goals, and know their standing, if they don’t know the end goal. There is clear, concise, communication of the expectations. According to Sivarat et al. (2021) a leader can guide or motivates followers to achieve a set goal, clearly identifying roles, work structures, and work needs.” A specific example of this is Peppa’s beginning of the year leadership meeting. Each year the metric goals

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

10 change. Peppa outlines each individual metric, the previous year’s performance, and the goal for the upcoming year. The last strength of Peppa’s within transactional leadership is the ability to provide continual coaching and feedback. Transactional leadership is about rewards and consequences. Peppa has strengths in being able to deliver feedback in a way that keeps the follower engaged in the goal, but working through the needed improvement. A specific example of this is during operational meetings, Peppa is able to discuss how the emergency department is not meeting goal, but manages up the team members involved in working to get it back on track. This may not be a full exchange but it rewards the team members with recognition while they continue to improve their performance. Leadership weaknesses One of Peppa’s weaknesses in transactional leadership theory is her strict management of goals. Peppa offers a specific pathway in order to achieve success, any variation from that and you receive penalties. A specific example of this is when the emergency department stopped focusing on the time interval of disposition to depart, and instead started working on improving medication order to administration time, this deviated from the original plan to decease discharge length of stay. The penalty for the department was a reprimand for sticking with the original action plan, which in turn decreased morale and motivation for the department. This is seen as a weakness due to the goal of keeping your employees motivated with positive transactions. By being too focused on the specific details, the staff felt they couldn’t think for themselves, and therefor didn’t want to be productive at all. A second weakness of Peppa is the lack of personal connection she makes with her followers. Peppa is very goal oriented and motivates people with monetary incentives or

11 recognition. This is an initial win for short term goals, but over time employees are left wanting more and the need to feel more included. A specific example is the prolonged regulatory readiness the hospital must have. Peppa wants all things to be survey ready at all times. This is the ideal situation but requites a lot of buy in from staff. After this ongoing strain with the same incentives, the hospital employees are left wanting more than just incentive points for being the first unit to have their daily sweeps completed. Without the personal connection, it leaves a gap between leader and follower. There’s no connection or want for the followers to keep working so hard. This is a weakness because it doesn’t encourage employee engagement, which leads to productivity. Kuhnert and Lewis (1987) speak about transactional leaders progressing to the highest level of leadership through interpersonal understanding because it allows them to have trust, commitment, respect, and mutuality. This ties back to the personal connection weakness by reinforcing the connection between leader and follower that helps to drive productivity and achieving goals. The last weakness of Peppa within transactional leadership is time management. While working towards specific goals, there are often specific deadlines to achieve them by. Peppa can frequently lose track of time, or not recognize the nearing deadline, which causes the followers to have to pivot quickly, or exert more effort in a shorter amount of time to achieve the goals. A specific example is the deadline for annual employee evaluations. They are typically due in the first week of June. Peppa lost track of time and did not distribute the assigned lists to leaders until the second week in June. What normally is a four-to-six-week process, was condensed down to two weeks due to Peppa not being timely in her role as leader. This is seen as a weakness within transactional leadership theory because being able to set realistic timelines to achieve goals is part if the leader’s transaction with the follower. When it is scrambling and

12 seeming unorganized, the follower doesn’t exhibit faith or the drive to work to achieve results. It results in frustration and requires higher incentives from the leader to seem fair. Leadership Recommendations The first leadership recommendation for Peppa would be to utilize a virtual calendar with reminders of goal timelines. This aligns with her weakness of losing track of time. A specific example would be related to annual employee evaluations. She would set calendar reminders to disperse employee evaluation list. Another reminder to check status of evals, and another reminder for due date of evals. This is an effective recommendation because it will allow Peppa to be reminded of upcoming deadlines, and start dates, as well as a consistent visual reminder of ongoing goals. It relates to transactional leadership because it allows her to be timely in her objects, but also provides checkpoints for additional incentives or if needed penalties for the employees to ensure they are track for completion as well. The second leadership recommendation for Peppa would be to start getting to know employees on a personal level. A specific example if this would be for Peppa to engage in one- on-one rounding with her followers on a regular cadence. Peppa has a strength in meeting to communicate goals, and is very business oriented, but does not have the personal connection with followers to maintain a steady drive from them. By learning more about the employees, and not just what incentives drive them, Peppa will be able to engage and create more productivity from all followers. This aligns with transactional leadership theory as it is the main goal to produce results through transactions. With Peppa’s strength of innovation, it will create more opportunity of innovative incentives when you know more about their personal drive, in addition to professional.

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

13 The recommendation for Peppa related to transactional leadership theory would be improve the ability to pivot in situations to still achieve the end goal. According to Healey (2018), “One of its limitations is that little thought is given to shifting to a new plan if the environment changes during the original plan’s execution” (p.29). A specific example of this for Peppa would be to implement a plan to improve a discharge length of stay. Offer the incentives for positive performance. If the performance isn’t improving as desired, offer incentives to employees who offer ideas to change the plan. This still falls under the transactional leadership theory but allows the followers to implement their creativity as well to help achieve the desired goal. They are rewarded for adapting their thinking, in a way that can improve their discharge metrics. This allows Peppa to stay in control of her metrics, but still have meaningful transactions with her followers.

14 References Bernard Healey. (2018). Principles of Healthcare Leadership. Health Administration Press. Kuhnert, K. W., & Lewis, P. (1987). Transactional and Transformational Leadership: A Constructive/Development Analysis. The Academy of Management Review , 12(4), 648-657. Sivarat, N., Thamma, P., & Kenaphoom, S. (2021). Full Range Leadership Concepts. Ilkogretim Online , 20(5), 208-216. http://doi.org/10.17051/ilkonline.2021.05.19

DCM2 TASK 2

Related Documents