Course Application Reflection APA format graduate level
LALANYC
summarize.docxStrategy to improve VanGuard Health Services
The healthcare sector is evolving at a faster rate than ever, with convenience and access being the major driving forces. With emerging technologies, health care providers and centers are finding themselves with no option but adapting to this technology (Shi, L. & Singh, 2010). For a healthcare provider to survive and maintain itself as a leader and mentor change has to be incorporated in the day-to –day normal routine. For this institute to improve their quality of service and care it’s important to cover all the drastic changes in the health care industry.
One of the great ways for Vanguard center to improve its scorecard is to adopt a Strategic Thinking Map (Ginter, swayne, & Duncan, 2013). Some of the strategies to consider in choosing this method include market development and merger alliance. In using the first strategy market development, the main healthcare priority is to dominate the market with the service or product being introduced. A great product at this period is telemedicine.
Telemedicine involves availing services to patients on their mobile gadgets. In this day and age, almost everyone has a mobile device from the old to school going, children. In implementing telemedicine, a mobile app, SMS service, and a USSD service are crucial ensuring every customer is covered depending on their preferred modes of service access. The mobile app will enable its users to see a doctor for minor ailments. The telemedicine app is projected to help in expansion strategy. The telemedicine will also appeal to all those who love convenience.
In the current trend with apps such as telemedicine patients can see the doctor for minor ailments without walking into the center and also book appointments (Westfield, 2011)
. The people must be able to understand the trend and technology on the market, hence the need to make it user-friendly even for young patients (aged 9-12 who own mobile devices). The people are looking for flexibility and solutions that work for them which are influencing market trends, and telemedicine is one of this solutions. Effective Marketing is one that meets the needs and expectations of the target demographic.
In approaching merger alliance, the healthcare provider has to consider partners who share similar vision and dreams (Ginter, swayne, Duncan, 2013). A great partnership is to collaborate with major drug stores. The partnership will work such that the health care organization will setup clinics in the drug stores. This strategy will cover the patients who love to get all their service in one place that is a clinic and drug store in one place. The aim of this moves is to increase growth regarding patients seeking the services of the healthcare center (Shi, L. & Singh, 2010).
Analyzing the marketing techniques that could be used to improve the marketing within different demographics.
Telemedicine apps.
The apps are essential to offer flexibility (Free, Phillips, &Watson, 2013). The aim is to enable patients make appointments and seek doctors for different minor ailments without much ‘hustle’ of traveling to the center.
A variety of services.
The approach is to increase the services offered to meet the needs of a larger demographic. The partnership between the healthcare organization and drug stores is an added service, where clinics will be set up in all major drug stores. These will be a major shift from the traditional drug store business to health checks ups and treatment.
The other way to improve in healthcare score card is to implement Benchmarking techniques; community needs assessment and capacity/organization assessment (Ginter, swayne, Duncan, 2013). The benchmarking technique works by identifying successful healthcare centers making plans to visit and assess what they are doing and compare it to your organization to learn areas of improvement and what you can copy and improve to work for you. For example, in implementing the telemedicine app, the hospital could review an existing telemedicine app that has had success in services delivery. Reviewing the system will help identify strong points and weakness in the system and uncovered areas which they can improve to out-do the competitors.
The community needs assessment aim to identify wants of a given demographic regarding sanitation, disease control and health care gaps within the identified community (Ginter, swayne, Duncan, 2013). For example, in identifying a health care gap, this would serve as a new service or product to introduce into the market.
The last strategy is being able to identify organization capacity regarding the ability to start, maintain and improve its adaptive strategy. For example, can this organization initiate a research project and be able to finance and sustain it over the long-term. The organization could also identify community projects that it can support and fund them as a way to give back to the community. An example is setting up free medical checkups. Such a service will also give the community a good impression of the organization and higher chance of seeking their services when sick. In conclusion a sound Strategic Thinking Map, Benchmarking techniques, community needs assessment and capacity/organization assessment are crucial in improving the healthcare score card and also establishing it as a major healthcare provider.
References
Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L. E. (2013). Strategic Management Of Healthcare Organizations 7th Edition.San Francisco.
Shi, L., & Singh, D. (2010). Major characteristics of US health care delivery. Essentials of the US health care system. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 1-25.
Weisfeld, V. D. (2011). Jonas and Kovner's health care delivery in the United States. A. R. Kovner, & J. R. Knickman (Eds.). Springer Publishing Company.
Strategy Implementation is the processes of managing activities that take place within an organization during the execution of a strategic plan (Chang, 2016). Due to the competition and complexity in the healthcare market, healthcare providers must find a way to add value to their services. This is only achievable through value added service delivery strategies which include; pre-service, point-of-service, and after service.
These value added service delivery strategies are critical to the success of a healthcare firms and the positioning of the healthcare organization in the market environment by creating a competitive advantage. Strategic managers play a crucial role here because they are responsible for developing and managing the strategic plan and making sure that the delivery strategies are compatible.
The pre-service delivery plan entails the planning process and carrying out of activities that enable an organization to determine its targeted customers and the services to be offered to them. It involves various activities such as; market and marketing research that will enable the healthcare organization to determine its appropriate customers and the type of services it will deliver to them. This is achievable by gathering data about the available market, the potential customers, their wants, and needs, what will satisfy them, and finally, the customers’ habit regarding healthcare (Swayne et al. 2012). It also mainly for example in a big city like New York City a private clinic has to cater to a demographic of patients who are a younger population in a working midtown city area. The practice I work in is in a busy office building where people tent to schedule their appointments during lunch time. The healthcare facility would have to possibly cater to these demographics.
Two, developing a design service such as long-term care and emergency medication or segmentation that will provide satisfaction to patients, and physicians. Three, branding services that imply trust, consistency, and a defined set of expectation in the mind of the patients. Four, selecting a moderate pricing strategy that matches the quality of the services offered. Five, choosing a strategic and convenient location for patients to access satellite offices and the hospital branches. Lastly, advertising and personal selling of the healthcare services on the media and shows (Swayne et al. 2012).
The point-of-service delivery strategy revolves around patients’ care and clinical service delivery. It involves various activities such as; mass customization where physicians have a responsibility of capturing a friendly physician-patient relationship for long-term benefits. Two, maintaining quality medical operations and ensuring that no medical errors occur. Three, coming up with new systems, and ways of improving performance and patient care. Lastly, redesigning service lines by enhancing the patient experience rather than considering financial aspects of delivering care (Hicks et al. 2015).
After service activity is the final contact the patient has with the healthcare company till the next appointment if recommended by the physician. Several activities take place during this stage. First, the healthcare organization is supposed to undertake follow-up activities which include; calling out patients to ask if they are progressing as expected or more prescriptions are needed, and conducting patient satisfaction studies to know how they felt about the treatment process (Hartgerink et al. 2015).
Second, during the billing activities, the company should avoid errors, be ready to address complaints, explain service charges and, use medical terminologies that patients understand. Finally, the healthcare organization should offer follow-on activities by giving room for further checkup services such as home care nursing (Hartgerink et al. 2015). In conclusion, if an organization can implement this value added services then it will be sure of having a competitive advantage over the other firms in the same market.
Contraction strategy differs from the human resource strategy as it the incentives that the organization gives is assumed to encourage the employees to tend to other jobs or is requested to retire earlier than expected. Contraction may be achieved through reduction of the workforce either through retrenchment or laying off people (Eesley, Hsu, and Roberts, 2014). Maintenance of scope strategy is pursued by the management when they have believed that past strategy has been appropriate and therefore very few changes are required (Hitt, Ireland, and Hoskisson, 2012). Therefore, the management is noted to exploit the recent strategies and only improve the status quo for the already existing approved strategies. Thus, this strategy is different from the expansion strategies as it relies on past strategies experiences, and in the case of an error made, the company is bound to suffer great losses.
The most challenging adaptive strategy to implement in an organization is expansion plan. This is because the procedure entails diversification, market development, vertical integration, product development and diffusion. The policy becomes a challenge as there is an additional workforce which can be a challenge for both Start-up Company and n already established the company. Furthermore, the approach is very challenging when integrating the employees into the enterprise. Often when new hires are brought into the enterprise, there is the tendency of them not fitting in right away, despite the training that is conducted to bring them up to speed of the business operations, cases have been reported where some employees note they feel like they are disrupting an already existing employee’s environment (Pawlik and Neumann, 2015). This can be hard to handle as a large company leader because it is based off each employee’s personal experience and training knowledge.
Therefore, to ensure the new employees fit into the organization, if they have been enrolled in high numbers, the company is challenged to change their organization culture to have one which also includes them (Eesley, Hsu and Roberts, 2014). Furthermore, for a service related organization like health care, who typically have a unique culture, the new employees are expected to adapt to the already practiced values in the company. With the new service lines that are required for the new skills and expertise, it may impact the organization process and cultures either positively or negatively. In summary when a company can maintain scope; the group is thus able to handle motivation of employees, ensure the compensation plans are okay and the company values are maintained with succession plans in place.
