Cleveland Clinic Research Information Project

CAPSTONE SECTION 2 3

Capstone Section 2

Christina Valvo

HA499

Kaplan University

October 10, 2017

Financial and Marketing

Service Reimbursement

At Cleveland Clinic, the employees are required to meet some service reimbursements, which forms part of the total reward package in the organization. The employees are provided dental reimbursement having two dental insurance plan options with co-insurance and small deductions. Other reimbursement services include tuition reimbursement that will motivate the employees to pursue further education for knowledge and skill advancement. Also, under the service reimbursement is a retirement plan including compensations offering employees at Cleveland Clinic with a pension plan being paid by the organization ("Access Anytime Anywhere | Cleveland Clinic", 2017).

Funding methods

Funding is essential for the health care organization to run its operations and provide quality care to clients. An organization gets its funding from diverse sources, which is also evident at Cleveland Clinic. Cleveland clinic needs financial resources to fund hospital operations and research activities. They get direct funding from the federal and local stare governments. This contributes a larger percentage of funds that the organization receives (Hess, Barss, & Stoller, 2014). In addition, Cleveland Clinic sources its financial resources from the philanthropies and royalties that are directed to the research activities aimed at improving patient care. It also gets its revenue from the patient services which are presented in their annual financial statements.

Research issues

Cleveland Clinic is committed to improvement of the health care through research. Its medical professionals are actively engaged in research activities trying to solve complex medical problems and advance the provision of quality care. The hospital aspires to be an excellent health care institution promoting new medical advancement and medical research. The clinic brings together different researchers, clinicians and physicians who conduct several research activities including clinical research and basic laboratory research. The clinic and scientific teams publish their research findings on successful completion in peer-reviewed journals.

Quality of ethics

Accreditation of Cleveland Clinic

The Clinic is continually preparing itself for regular surveys that are conducted in compliance with excellent levels of health care quality and enhanced patient safety standards that are set by regulatory, accrediting and licensing agencies. The Joint Commission, the Ohio Department of Health, CMS and other accrediting agencies, has accredited Cleveland Clinic. Accreditation is done after a three-year onsite survey has been conducted so that the hospital is approved to meet the set standards. To maintain this accreditation status, all the department and individual programs at the Cleveland Clinic work to comply with the standards. Additionally, the health professionals and staff members have received recognition form the professional associations and peers (Stoller, 2014).

Awards

Cleveland Clinic has been awarded and recognized for its innovative activities since they combine clinical practice, research and education in provision of evidence-based and scientifically proven treatment for cardiac, esophageal, vascular and thoracic conditions. Cleveland Clinic has been feted as the number one in America for health and vascular center because of patient services, survival and advanced technologies ("Access Anytime Anywhere | Cleveland Clinic", 2017). The Clinic had received the GOLD plus certification by the American Heart Association due to improvement of the quality of care offered to patients who are being treated for health failure decompensation. Gold Plus is given to the hospitals for utilization of ‘Get With Guidelines’ and treatment interventions. Cleveland Clinic has been actively implementing the guidelines to improve the management of heart failure patients so that recurrent hospitalizations are prevented.

Kaufman Center for Heart Failure Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the Cleveland Clinic received the Beacon Award of Excellence based on its continuous improvement in provision of the best quality care to its patients. The institution is one of the few health care organizations to the Beacon Award since its inception in the year 2003. This could be attributed to their quality care and patients safety guided by the highest level of health care standards. In addition, the Cleveland Clinic is one of the eleven hospitals that have achieved a three-star rating. The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) gives the Stellar Rating in three subcategories. This is a clear indication that Cleveland has received many awards within and outside the institution.

Regulations

Cleveland Clinic complies with various regulatory policies that have been set by the different agencies. First, it adheres to the standards of quality health services as enforced by the local state and federal health department. This is to promote safe and quality health care to the patients and community at large. It also complies with the equal opportunity policies in all its operations including workforce development and provision of its services (Stoller, 2014). No one is discriminated against when accessing health care services provided by the Clinic. They are compliant with the labor laws and they offer equal opportunities in recruitment and hiring of staff. Staff development and research is given equally in strict compliance with the state and federal statutes and regulations. Since most the of the operations are digitized, Cleveland Clinic uses electronic health records (EHR) and health information technology (HIT). It is therefore fully compliant with the HIPPA laws, which entails security and privacy of the health records (Hopp & Lovejoy, 2013). The organization maintains the security of its information and data including the electronic bar code transaction. The medical laboratories in Cleveland Clinic comply with the Laboratory General Checklist to ensure that they meet the expected standards. It also maintains the regulations of the College of American pathologists and HIPPA standards since it has been licensed by the relevant agencies (Stoller, 2014). The federal government through the Food and Drug Administration ensures that Cleveland Clinic is in strict conformity with the law by giving it licenses, permits and registration certificates after onsite surveys have been done for the quality standards.

Ethical Issues regarding Care

Cleveland Clinic has put in place strategies to promote ethical practice in its operations. It has implemented a program to ensure compliance with ethics and integrity. Cleveland Clinic has five basic values that form its foundation for the ethical practice. These include compassion, quality, collaboration, integrity and commitment. The Ethics Committee at Cleveland is proactively involved in promoting and supporting the five fundamental values including the ethical decisions and values of its professionals, employees, administrators and patients. The institution’s bioethics program supports clinical practice, education and research (Hess, Barss, & Stoller, 2014). They also have Ethics Consultation Service, which is available to offer ethics advice to the organization, and staff who are dealing directly with situations that have given rise to ethical questions. This is an advisory service and they provide advices to guide individuals, groups, health care professionals and research in arriving at informed decisions. Cleveland Clinic has clarified that the professionals, patients and their family members have the responsibility for their own informed decisions after getting the advices from the Ethics Consultation Service.

Marketing

Strategies

Marketing strategies are essential for any organization in order to meet its organizational goals and objectives. The Cleveland Clinic has used the online marketing strategy as it main approach. This is conducted through the organization’s website geared to address its target clients. The Cleveland Clinic is also using content marketing and it has been termed as the most successful organization in the healthcare industry that applies content marketing. The biggest goals of the Clinic’s content marketing approach are to create brand affinity and awareness (Donovan et al., 2014). This is aimed at reaching its clients whether they are patients or not. Cleveland Clinic feels that it should be helpful, useful and relevant even to the test of time. It has a Health Hub Blog that was created in April 2012 to help the organization push its content marketing strategy. Cleveland Clinic’s marketing department posts its content approximately three to five times daily on their blog creating rich marketing content ("Cleveland Clinic Blog: Why It's Among the Most Visited Health-Care Destinations", 2017).

Cleveland Clinic also uses social media to market is services and brand. It has been a pace setter for other health care systems and hospitals in the use of social medial I marketing. They have understood the marketing value of social media approach. Social media has given the organization an opportunity to be part of the daily lives of people whether they are sick or not. Cleveland Clinic is using social media to establish and grow relationship with diverse health care service consumers that is viewed as transcending time and space. The Clinic uses social media such as Facebook having over one million followers to maintain its relevance it the client’s daily lives ("Cleveland Clinic Blog: Why It's Among the Most Visited Health-Care Destinations", 2017). The major source of success in this marketing strategy for Cleveland Clinic is that they share useful and relevant information. The social media channel is also fueled by the Health Hub Blog providing it with rich content to share. This marketing strategy is not focused on advertising the organization but it deals with leveraging data and helping client to make healthy decisions and solve health problems.

Branding

Cleveland Clinic has its patients from over 100 countries globally. Its brand has been and enduring success over the years and it has been attributed to the organizational success. According to Paul Matsen, who is the Chief Communication and Marketing Officer at Cleveland, "The Cleveland Clinic brand is inseparable from its lifesaving mission." The Cleveland Clinic brand has earned trust and recognition throughout the world for its outstanding performance as an organization providing high-quality patient experience, clinical excellence, and valuable medical information for health care professionals, patients and families. The highly innovative social media approach have created brand awareness and marketing strategy whose mainstay is the Health Hub blog. The audience for the blog reached over 2.5 million people monthly and it is essential in building the Cleveland Clinic brand awareness and client positive perceptions.

Community and employee involvement

The Cleveland Clinic recognizes the need for partnership with its employees and community since it provides services to diverse communities. It takes the employees as its major stakeholders since they live and work in Cleveland Clinic. The clinic believes that the health of the surrounding community goes beyond the physical wellbeing and includes factors that improve the experience of people living, thriving and working in Northeast Ohio. The clinic has rolled out initiative dubbed Let’s Move It® targeted at improving the wellbeing the people in communities Cleveland Clinic serves by focusing on health education, advocacy, healthy lifestyle change, policy, and economic vitality (Hess, Barss, & Stoller, 2014). Through the employee and community involvement, the clinic has connected the residents with programs, resources and organization that have empowered them to transform their lives through creating partnership opportunities, advocacy, academic achievement, preventive health care and career preparedness among its employees.

References

Access Anytime Anywhere | Cleveland Clinic. (2017). Cleveland Clinic. Retrieved 10 October 2017, from https://my.clevelandclinic.org/

Cleveland Clinic Blog: Why It's Among the Most Visited Health-Care Destinations. (2017). Content Marketing Institute. Retrieved 10 October 2017, from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2016/07/cleveland-clinic-visited-destinations/

Donovan, C. J., Hopkins, M., Kimmel, B. M., Koberna, S., & Montie, C. A. (2014). How Cleveland Clinic used TDABC to improve value. Healthcare Financial Management, 68(6), 84-89.

Hess, C. A., Barss, C., & Stoller, J. K. (2014). Developing a leadership pipeline: the Cleveland Clinic experience. Perspectives on medical education, 3(5), 383-390.

Hopp, W. J., & Lovejoy, W. S. (2013). Hospital operations: Principles of high efficiency health care.

Stoller, J. K. (2014). The Cleveland Clinic: a distinctive model of American medicine. Annals of translational medicine, 2(4).