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 develop a strategic plan for the same organization.

Customer Liaisons

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Introduction

The Patient Care Executive is a liaison position in the hospital field that is used to level the ground of doctors and patients. Patients tend to feel intimidated to make critical decisions. Patients always want the only outcome out of the situation, which is to get better. The PCE comes in here and helps the patients understand the diagnosis and the recommended cure provided by the doctors. Such a program receives mixed reactions of both harsh criticism and welcoming remarks. On the doctor’s side, it was a little frustrating as they have to answer to the administration, the patients, and now the Patient Care Executives. For the patients and the Patient Care Executive members, it is roses as the patients receive comfort, and the Patient Care Executives share salary with the doctors. The question of whether customer liaisons are helping or hurting someone is an opinion. It depends on how the PCE affected the respective individual. The thesis below should answer the question, “are our customer liaisons helping or hurting.”

External factors

The external environment is very critical to any organization or an individual business. It prompts the holders of the business or the manager to adjust their operations to reflect their external business environment. All this is to stay ahead of the competition. In the medical field, it is essential to give the patients an excellent service and excellent health care for them to be back again. Some of the external environmental factors affecting medical care are reporting and learning from diagnostic errors, medical liability, communication and resolution programs, risk management, and payment and care delivery, among others.

Two factors that affect the organization are reporting and learning from diagnostic errors and payment. Reporting and learning from diagnostic errors prompt the patient safety and reliability to the hospital. For these events to be effective, conducting a system-based analysis of the near misses and adverse events often will help. In this way, the doctors can know what to do and what not to do from their mistakes. The process of giving a diagnosis is improved and made better from the analysis. Reporting and learning from diagnostic errors are very important for the Patient Care Executive to blend with the doctors for better service delivery to the patient. All this because it makes the doctors and Patient Care Executive be on the same page and handle the patient well (Zboril-Benson, 2016).

Payment and care delivery are other major yet overrated external factors. In basic knowledge, the more expensive the services, the better the quality of service delivery and the cheaper the service, the most inferior quality of service delivery. This is a very critical factor because as much as one offers better services at high prices, errors are prone to human, and this affects the thinking of the patients. For one to provide better services and health care, they need to have an experienced medical practitioner. Qualified medical practitioners tend to be expensive, which in turn affects the cost of service delivery. These two factors are significant to the organization because the Patient Care Executive may seem costly to the patients because there are no other hospitals with the liaison implemented in the hospital. A patient may feel they are paying more for the Patient Care Executive other than the service itself. The organization should moderate the pricing to accommodate the Patient Care Executive, better service delivery, and better-qualified doctors.

Internal factors

Just as the external factors, internal factors are equally essential and impact service delivery and its quality. Internal factors are the drive and motivation for the organization to meet its objectives. These factors are strengths if they positively affect the organization or weaknesses if they negatively affect the organization. Financial resources, physical resources, and human resources are considered in the internal factors of the organization. Some of the human resources are employees, patients, and volunteers, while physical factors include equipment, location of the hospital, and financial resources include investment opportunities and source of income, among others. Major internal factors include strategic risks, organizational and operational, innovation, business risks, corporate culture, and internal factors in SWOT analysis.

Strategic risks are significant for the organization to employ to reach goals and targets. This helps the business meet its business plan and objectives, just like the Patient Care executive is a strategic plan that tends to bring in more patients. It might receive adverse criticism because the patients might think it is a desperate move to try to recap the lost glory of the organization. Having an organizational culture brings out a system of doing things inside the organization. These operations tend to be unique because corporate cultures differ and cannot be the same. The culture inside the organization involves a strategic and systematic way of doing things that lead up to the success of the organization (Fakhri et al., 2016).

Organizational culture tends to be an essential factor in the organization because the Patient Care Executive is a unique way of doing things. The staff has to blend in with the style of doing things. For example, the doctors who left because they could not adapt to the liaison means that the doctors do not want to follow the organizational culture. For Strategic risks, the organization cannot survive by the book all along, and they have to take risks. For example, to employ a high-end doctor for proper consultation to attract wealthy businesspeople to invest in the betterment of service delivery. Organizations must meet their targets or business plan.

It will show success for the organization and portray a good picture to the consumers of their product. In this case, the patients will see that they will receive better health care at an affordable price. All this is an upper hand at the competition and shows a success. More patients will appear at the doorstep for health services; in this case, the Patient Care Service gives care, support, and love at the tough time in their lives.

Impact towards competitive strategy

The competitive strategy is the ability of an organization to come up with ideas that are long-term to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors in the respective industry. An organization needs to gain an edge over its counterparts as it only shows how successful they are. Besides, gaining advantage will attract more customers to the brand, hence more revenue towards the organization. In this case, the four factors discussed above are giving the hospital a competitive advantage. Reporting and learning from diagnostic errors increase the level of integrity of the hospital. It shows how the hospital is transparent and would not gamble with the lives of its patients. Reporting of errors ensures the doctors they have a safe and confidential environment for them to learn from their mistakes, near misses, and adverse situations.

Such a strategy is for the safety of the doctors and the betterment of the service provision. Such an arrangement is right because it prompts the security of the doctor because when they report, the board responds with a positive critical response. In turn, it encourages doctors to learn from their failures and also not be afraid to try new medicines for rare diseases. If the reporting leads to punishing the doctors, they will be hesitant to report. All because it will precipitate lawsuits after they are accused in court, and eventually, it will make them get sacked and their licenses revoked. When doctors get afraid to report, it will lower the experience of the doctors because they will not learn from their experiences (Zinovieva, et al., 2016).

Such a move prompts a competitive advantage because the doctors get a chance to learn from their near misses and adverse experiences. This minimizes the level of mistakes in the future because the doctors will be exposed to a comfortable environment to work freely without pressure. The results of fewer errors in the future attract more patients to your hospital and increase the loyalty and trust of the patients towards the hospital. That gives a competitive advantage over other hospitals, and it also supports the incorporation of the Patient Care Executive board and its members. This is because the Patient Care Executive handles the comfort part and explains to them whatever is being done to them as the patients cannot understand the doctors’ words.

For internal factors, it will boost the internal operations of the organization. For example, organizational culture is a very critical factor that is usually adopted by many organizations to get one hundred percent participation by the employees. Corporate culture brings about a positive working environment and motivation, especially between the management and the rest of the staff. Specific rules and regulations are followed; for instance, no outsourcing information acquired inside the organization to competitors. With a pleasant working environment and positive minded working staff, the performance chart of the employees goes up gradually. With better performance comes satisfied customers; in this case, patients become confident with the services rendered and refer their friends to the hospital. That shows a significant boost from your opponents, hence a competitive advantage (Namada, 2018).

Strategy

Most organizations focus their targets on financial systems because they are centered on improving profits. In this case, the organization implemented the Patient Care Executive to enhance service delivery and also to give room doctors to practice medicine. The doctors do not agree with the PCE members as they are overdoing their part by misguiding the patients on decision making. A good strategy is involving both the Patient Care Executive members and doctors to a weekly meeting presided over by the human resource officer. These meetings will have the aim of putting these two participants on the same page by clearly stating what their work is and where the boundaries are. For instance, the Patient Care executive members only comfort the patients.

They only come in in decision making where necessary and let the doctors do their job, which is attending to the patient. Peaceful coexistence will be observed by clearly defining their tasks, and misunderstandings will reduce creating a friendly work environment. Such events will lead to retaining both the doctors and the Patient Care Executive program. A win-win situation (Evans & Stoddart., 2017).

Conclusion

The Patient Care Executive program has both its advantages and disadvantages, just like everything else in this universe. It is, therefore, only rational to review both the advantages and disadvantages, write them down and weighs which is stronger. If the benefits are stronger, then it is only sane to retain the program, but if the cons are compelling, then it is safe to disband the program. In such a situation, the question “are our customer liaisons helping or hurting” is answered. Customers are benefiting from the program, and more positive comments are received from the program instead of negative comments. An answer is that the liaison is helping the customers, and it is only reasonable to retain it to maintain a competitive advantage.

References

Evans, R. G., & Stoddart, G. L. (2017). Producing health, consuming health care. In Why are some people healthy and others not? (pp. 27-64). Routledge.

Fakhri, S., Engelberg, R. A., Downey, L., Nielsen, E. L., Paul, S., Lahdya, A. Z., ... & Curtis, J. R. (2016). Factors affecting patients' preferences for and actual discussions about end-of-life care. Journal of pain and symptom management, 52(3), 386-394.

Namada, J. M. (2018). Organizational learning and competitive advantage. In Handbook of Research on Knowledge Management for Contemporary Business Environments (pp. 86-104). IGI Global.

Zboril-Benson, L. R. (2016). Why nurses are calling in sick: the impact of health-care restructuring. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research Archive, 33(4).

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.