Capstone Project: Implementing a Strategic Plan Building on the PESTLE Analysis, Case Study 1: Are Our Customer Liaisons Helping or Hurting?, Case Study 2: Health Care Needs Real Competition, and your outline that you completed in Week 5, continue to dev

Customer Liaisons Case Study

Kanajah Blake

Health Services Admin Capstone :HSA 599

Donna Levesque

Strayer University

July 22, 2019

Introduction

For Krisna Hospital to maintain a competitive advantage in the healthcare marketplace, it is essential that its management examines the environmental factors that influence its development. Once the management understands both internal and external factors that impact the operations of the hospital, it will be able to come up with a conclusive and efficient decision. Therefore, Amrita and Krisna Hospital, in general, should analyze and understand the internal and external factors that significantly influence their business.

External Environmental Forces

External factors are those which the hospital has no control over but equally affect its business operations. However, it is essential to put them into consideration so that the hospital can make suitable adjustments to its operations to make it fit into the same external environment (Amuna et al 2017). The external environment is therefore divided into general and task environment, also known as micro and macro factors.

For Krisna Hospital, the most crucial external environmental factor to put into consideration is the customers. Customers form one of the most fundamental elements of a business. Satisfying customer demands almost definitely lead to a successful organization. It is the reason businesses usually strive to tailor their operations to the interests of their customers.

Similarly, Krisna Hospital needs to tailor its operations to the needs of the customers. The hospital already identified the needs of the customers; a more simplified interpretation of their diagnoses than that which they get directly from the doctors (Amuna et al 2017). Even at the moment of the dilemma, customers still feel like their needs are being addressed by the patient care executives (PCEs). Thus, it is essential for the management to ensure that it considers this before coming to a decision regarding the PCEs.

The next external element to evaluate is competition. Competitors play an important role in influencing the way an organization designs its policies. Similarly, the primary objective of any enterprise is to usually stay above its competitors. In the healthcare industry, which is one of the most competitive fields, corporations strives stay at the top through constant innovations as well as the provision of quality services (Fernandez & Rainey, 2017).

Krisna hospital is no exception. The brining in and implementation of the PCEs idea has helped it leap a great margin in terms of gaining a competitive advantage. At the same time, it is a unique way of responding to the needs of its customers thereby catering for two internal environmental factors; competitive advantage and customers.

Hence, it has to look at the competitive aspect of the issue of PCEs before arriving at a decision. For this case, not many hospitals have customer liaisons. Therefore, the aspect of the competition will significantly impact the decision of the management regarding PCEs (Fernandez & Rainey, 2017).

This is because, despite the high turnover rates of the doctors, the hospital has been getting more referrals and keeping its customers since the inception of the PCEs. However, a lot more factors other than satisfying customer needs and gaining competitiveness come in play. It is the reason the hospital is in a dilemma of whether or not to get rid of the PCE position.

Internal Environmental Forces

Internal environmental factors are those tangible and intangible elements that an enterprise has control over since they happen within the company. In many cases, these internal factors are categorized as strengths and weaknesses (Fernandez & Rainey, 2017). A factor that inhibits the development of the franchise is considered as a weakness while that which positively impacts the company is a strength. As a result, numerous factors form the internal business environment since that is where most of the strategizing and action takes place. However, human resources, as well as innovation, form the essential factors that the leaders of Krisna Hospital need to consider.

In the contemporary business world, human resource is one of the most valuable company treasures. For this reason, businesses invest in human resource just as much as they invest in meeting the needs of customers for them to realize profits (Fernandez & Rainey, 2017). The human resource brings with it skills and ideas that propel corporations forward.

Without an effective human resource, customers do not get satisfaction from the products and services of a company, and the result is a loss. It is the reason that during early stages of the establishment of an enterprise, human resource comes second after the business owner identifies the customers. As a result, businesses strive to create a conducive environment for its human resource as one of the ways of gaining a competitive advantage and satisfying the needs of its customers.

For instance, Krisna Hospital is determined to make the doctors stay because they are the best and have helped in building the reputation of the hospital. The PCEs are also part of the hospital’s human resource whose input has significantly increased Krisna’s revenue by retaining their patients and increasing the number of referrals they get.

Thus, the state of employees can be a strength or a weakness in one’s business. Skilled and motivated employees equal customer satisfaction and more profit to the company. In other words, the state of the human resource of a corporate influences every part of the business (Zinovieva et al, 2016). For that reason, businesses usually strive to train their employees to ensure they are competent. Other times, they motivate them and create a conducive environment to improve their productivity.

The crisis at Krisna Hospital is about human resource. The doctors feel that the PCEs are undermining them while the PCEs think that the doctors are greedy. There is an issue of attitude among the most crucial employees of Krisna. Thus, the matter requires immediate address due to the high turnover rates of the doctors.

This is because a hospital needs sufficient and efficient doctors for it to be effectively operational. Therefore, the management of the hospital ought to harmonize the needs of the customers and those of the hospital by finding a solution to the issue of turnover. Human resource is also essential for the institution to remain in business and retain its market share among its competitors.

The next internal issue that Krisna needs to consider is innovation. The idea of bringing PCEs to cater to customers’ needs in terms of simplifying diagnoses was somehow innovative. This is because an innovation refers to the idea of adding something new into the business that improves its operations and also maximizes its profits. Successful innovation, therefore, is the bringing in of an idea that reduces costs, increases productivity, improves brand value, and increases competitive advantage.

In simple terms, innovation should be rewarding to the organization in which it is implemented. Thus, Krisna Hospital is at a crossroad in coming to the decision of whether to terminate the PCEs or continue with them (Zinovieva et al, 2016). The customers are as equally important as the doctors for the hospital to be fully operational. Losing key staff as is the case at Krisna is therefore not in the best interest of the future of the hospital.

Consequently, the hospital has to apply innovation for it to remain competitive or else it stands a high chance of losing its market share to its competitors. If the innovation is going to cost the hospital its doctors, which in turn will hurt its business operations, then it is not worth going forward with. However, with collective thinking and coming up with ideas, the hospital can find level ground for the doctors and the PCEs.

Impact of the Environmental Forces

All the environmental factors, both internal and external mentioned above, are intertwined in terms of their effect on the franchise. However, the factor at stake in the case of Krisna Hospital is a human resource. Any business strategy that affects human resource will, in turn, not only affect the customers, competitors, and innovation but will also affect the entire future business operations of the hospital.

This is because of the lack of doctors, who are the essential part of human resource in a hospital, will adversely affect the quality of healthcare that the customers will receive (Zinovieva et al, 2016). Once the clients do not get quality care from Krisna, they will be forced to move on to the next hospital that provides quality care. With the lack of human resource and few customers, the market share and competitiveness of the hospital will reduce.

On the other hand, the implementation of the PCE idea seems to be the best fit in improving the corporate’s ability to gaining a competitive advantage. Therefore, it will be difficult to eliminate it without jeopardizing the business operations of the hospital (Zinovieva et al, 2016). This is because the patients, who are the customers, are already accustomed to it and have embraced it as a good idea. It is the reason the hospital is retaining its customers and are getting referrals, which is good for business.

In other words, choosing to either get rid of the PCEs to retain the doctors or to go ahead with it and continue experiencing increased turnover is risky for Krisna Hospital. None of the options they have is healthy for their business. Hence, they have to come up with a better way of dealing with the problem after evaluating both internal and external environmental factors.

However, there is less chance they will evade risks. This will force them to do their due diligence collectively and find out the factor that will be least affected and will not impose severe consequences for the operations of the hospital. Such a strategy will require innovation to deal with.

Strategy Recommendation

The management of Krisna Hospital needs to clearly define the roles of the employees to avoid future controversies. After a clear definition of the roles of the PCEs and the doctors, the management should find a way of making both teams understand that their support of one another is crucial for the achievement of organizational goals.

This is because the entire Krisna Hospital wants to achieve a competitive advantage and maintain or even improve its market share (Baumgartner & Rauter, 2017). It is impossible for only one team, either doctors or the PCEs to meet the set goals single-handedly. Each of them may be phenomenal in accomplishing their tasks, but they cannot successfully bring business to the hospital individually. The contemporary business environment is designed in a way that different departments within an organization are interdependent.

For this case, therefore, the doctors need the PCEs to help the patients understand their diagnoses while the PCEs need the doctors to provide quality care to the customers for the sake of the hospital’s reputation. None of the two groups of the employees was hired to outshine the other (Baumgartner & Rauter, 2017). Rather, they are meant to complement one another, compensate for each other’s weaknesses and assist one another whenever it is necessary for the achievement of the common goal of the hospital.

Since the management was not aware of the consequences of bringing in the PCEs beforehand, they might now take time to analyze the changes that each of the departments will have to undergo and prepare them in advance probably through training. In simple terms, the human resource department should implement strategies that will improve employee relations to make Krisna Hospital a stronger enterprise.

Other than training, the human resource department needs to come up with policy guidelines to help the two departments understand their jurisdictions as well as roles. Policies are often an excellent way of helping employees accomplish tasks for the achievement of organizational goals rather than for their own interests like is the case for the doctors and PCEs at Krisna Hospital.

Conclusion

The management of Krisna Hospital is in a dilemma in this situation. However, with strategic thinking, they can easily navigate through the problem and ensure they come up with a solution that will ensure the achievement of organizational goals. The process will take time given the strong convictions of the two parties in question. Nonetheless, its achievement will help the hospital gain competitive advantage by a considerable margin. Thus, it is the role of the management to ensure the solution they design reduces turnover of doctors while keeping the PCEs.

References

Amuna, Y. M. A., Al Shobaki, M. J., & Naser, S. S. A. (2017). Strategic Environmental Scanning: an Approach for Crises Management.

Baumgartner, R. J., & Rauter, R. (2017). Strategic perspectives of corporate sustainability management to develop a sustainable organization. Journal of Cleaner Production, 140, 81-92.

Fernandez, S., & Rainey, H. G. (2017). Managing successful organizational change in the public sector. In Debating Public Administration (pp. 7-26). Routledge.

Zinovieva, C. G., Kuznetsova, M. V., Dorfman, T. V., Limarev, P. V., & Limareva, J. A. (2016). Study of external and internal factors affecting enterprise’s stability. Advances in Systems Science and Applications, 16(1), 62-71.