Health Topics – Term Paper

Health system

Objectives, Metrics, Targets, and Initiatives to Help the Organization Achieve Designed Strategic Direction

•    Today, most organizations engage in strategic planning, although the degrees of sophistication and formality are different. Health First strives to provide quality care to the surrounding community and nurture a dedicated workforce that is quality driven (Health First, 2017).

•    Health First should first evaluate the current and expected future situation, determine the direction of the organization and come up with means of achieving it. The organization should consider the inputs that will be involved to make its goals achievable which include the employees, capital managerial and technical expertise and knowledge. By doing this, the organization will be aiming at getting the maximum out of the inputs. 

•    The organization should identify the present external and internal environment since the firm does not have the exclusive market. For this purpose, Health First should use TOWS strategic alternative matrix which is helpful in identifying strength and opportunities, strength and threats, weaknesses and opportunities, lastly, weaknesses and opportunities. 

•    While analyzing external threats and opportunities, Health First should consider various factors which might act as threats to the organization or opportunities and they include product and technology, social and political, demographic factors and competition.

•    Health  First should identify major success factors, then the significance of this achievable factors need to be estimated. Next, competitive factors in respect to these main success factors should be assessed and ranked. Therefore, a cautious analysis of the current competitive position gives an indication of Health First future profits. Additionally, the health care provider should forecast the future market and predict some of the challenges that it may face so as to come up with prior plans of mitigating such problems.

Recommendation and strategic control mechanism

•    Health First should make sure that the employees are well trained through the provision of further training. The company’s vision revolves around its staff and health care delivery to the surrounding community. The already established education and training center will play an essential role in transforming the skills of the existing workforce (Anderson, 2013).

•   Health First should focus on supporting and recognizing valued employees, volunteers and physicians during the change period as this enhances retention of highly skilled personnel and a committed workforce. To achieve this, the organization should implement some steps. Firstly, Health First management should identify the change and communicate it to everyone at all organization levels so that it is understood and supported. Secondly, the administration should engage everyone in the planning of the organization’s response to the change to enable all employees to identify potential trouble spot and participate in the improvement process. Lastly, the management should implement the change itself. 

•    With the ever changing technology in the health sector, Health First should invest in technology by ensuring  that updated equipment are installed in the facility to enable  Health First  to deal with ever-changing needs of health services World Health (Organization, 2007).

•    Operations should be analyzed carefully regarding research and development capabilities to enable Health First to meet the projected growth.

•    The strategic control mechanism aims at tracking the strategy as it is being implemented through identification of problems and make necessary adjustments.

• Defining control mechanism and organizational structure is vital since it enhances social relationship to support a collaborative action for change. Participation employees in this initiative assist actual developing infrastructure in line with the strategic goal.

•    Premise control is one mechanism Health First will use so as to systematically and continuously check whether the premises on which the strategy is based on are still valid.

•    Strategic surveillance is a mechanism that will be designed to observe wide range events inside and outside the organization that might interfere with tracking of the strategy.

•    Through strategic control, Health First aims at maintaining focus on service quality, achieving operational efficiency, enhancing customer responsiveness and fostering innovation (Konsynski, 1993).

•    The action steps for strategic control monitors the performance of employees. Employees are significant assets that Health First has invested in by providing training opportunities. As such, the organization should focus on their performance.

•    Health First provides quality care services to the patients. To achieve this, the organization has organized community event whereby its workers visit various places within the society to provide education and skills. The already established Training Health Center will also attract individuals from the surrounding community to enroll in different courses offered at the premise (Konsynski,1993).

Critical success factors that the organization can use to measure its performance 

•    Health First has focused on training employees who are a vital in strategic implementation. The employees should be taken for training so frequently and should attend various global workshops related to health care service. The Healthcare provider should further focus on employee satisfaction retention and succession as critical success indicators.

•    Health First operate in an environment that is competitive and should not rely on internal key performance indicators alone. External indicators need to be scanned since they comprises of customers who are vital to the organization. As such, Health First can focus on measures such as customer’s satisfaction and brand preference.

•    The health organization intends to provide better healthcare to the surrounding community through organizing public workshops. The participation of the local community in some of the these initiatives such as the willingness of the local to participate in public workshops will be success indicator (Andersson, 2013)

Effect of strategy formulation, weighing factors of measurement against current measurement benchmarks in the organization

•    Strategic formulation enables Health First to choose the appropriate course of action to attain the defined goals. The formulation of strategy allows the organization to carefully focus on the changes in the environment and be ready to deal with some of these changes.

•    Currently, Health First has limited service lines and marketing deficiencies. The strategy formulation enables the organization to evaluate the overall health care industry in terms of the size of the market, new market entries and an industrial threat to improve its marketing efficiency (Perera & 2012).

References

Andersson, A. C. (2013). Quality Improvement in Healthcare: Experiences from a Swedish County Council Initiative (Doctoral dissertation, Linköping University Electronic Press). Retrieved formhttp://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:616665/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Health First (2017). Health First Profile. Retrieved from https://www.health-first.org/about_us/index.cfm

Konsynski, B. R. (1993). Strategic control in the extended enterprise. IBM systems journal, 32(1), 111-142.

Perera, F. D. P. R., & Peiró, M. (2012). Strategic planning in healthcare organizations. Revista Española de Cardiología (English Edition), 65(8), 749-754.

World Health Organization. (2007). Everybody’s business–strengthening health systems to improve health outcomes: WHO framework for action. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/healthsystems/strategy/everybodys_business.pdf