Healthcare Organization Case Study
Case Study: Banner Healthcare
Banner Health organization is among the biggest non-profit organization in the USA. Its headquarters is at Phoenix, Arizona. It oversees about twenty nine healthcare facilities including home care programs, family health clinics, and long-term healthcare facilities. Banner Health care delivers its services to nine States in the Western and Mid-Western States (Banner Health, 2015). This organization was established in 1999 through the merging of Samaritan Health Systems and Lutheran Health systems. Currently, the organization has employed about 47,000 people who deliver services to about 300,000 service users (Berlyl Institute, n.d.). This healthcare organization caters for patient’s basic medical costs and emergency healthcare costs. Additionally, the organization covers for specialized healthcare services such as heart transplants, bone marrow transplants, and psychosocial rehabilitative services. This non-profit organization also covers for life threatening healthcare complications such as spinal injuries and Alzheimer disease. It is approximated that the total worth of the organization as 3.1 billion dollars, with an annual return of 2.6 billion dollar (Kuhn and Chuck, 2015).
Banner healthcare has focused its resources into delivery of safety and quality of care. This entails establishing stringent measures that detect mistakes such as patient identification errors, which impede delivery of quality services. The coordinated service improves the organization performance and maintains organization’s integrity as well as improving patient satisfaction (Banner Health, 2015). This has enabled the organization to identify functional areas, which require improvement in order to sustain its performance. This has led to the creation of cross-facility employees, whose role is to deliberate on ideas that ensure new knowledge on organization is gathered and integrated within the organization standards (Armbrister, 2012).
For example, for a very long time Banner health institution overlooked the relationship between organization cultures and its leadership, and ways they influenced the organization performances. The Banner Health organizations works together with other multiple healthcare facilities across the Nation, which makes it challenging to identify a standard policy that would ensure effective delivery of services in each of the healthcare facilities across the miles (Armbrister, 2012). This is attributable to the fact that each of the healthcare facility are in different geographical location, thus, the sociocultural factors differs from one healthcare facility to another. Thus, applying a common method would lead into more challenges. For this reason, the organization has adopted the integration of culture driven policies that would help sustain the organizations success. The organization culture plays an integral role in shaping the organizations performances (Berlyl Institute, n.d.). This includes identification of management themes that put the interests of the service users as the priority. The themes are as shown in the diagram 1.1 below.
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The above diagram illustrates the model used at this organization to run its day –to- day practices. The model comprises of four main themes; a) effective communication of the organization vision, b) measurable accountability, c) developing effective leadership and d) sustaining the success. The first theme addresses the role of effective communication, which is one of the main hindrances of success in most of the institution. This model ensures that there is effective communication between the employees and their leaders; thus, the employees work to achieve the organization vision, mission and goals (Kuhn and Chuck, 2015).
The second theme discusses the issue of employee’s responsibility and accountability. The leader’s roles are to ensure that the employee’s accountability is aligned within the organization’s framework. This implies that the leaders acts as role models, and are expected to exemplify the true measure of accountability within their organizations (Armbrister, 2012). Banner Health has established solid metrics (patient’s satisfaction and experiences) systems, which evaluates the accountability and success each healthcare facility. The applications of score cards ensure that each employee is held accountable of their services. The leaders are expected to guide and provide all the resources needed, and to motivate the employees. This is to ensure that Bander’s health mission and vision are articulated effectively (Berlyl Institute, n.d.).
The third theme involves recruitment process and staffing ratios. The banner health has adopted the habit of recruiting leaders who are proactive and are likely to steer success. This is because active leaders ensure that their employee’s skills are improved through refresher courses and internal programs. This ensures that employees’ specific skills and talents are improved, and new skills are developed through continuous learning. The organization promotes teamwork. It is through the teamwork that cultural competencies are developed which ensures that the employees respect each other’s values and beliefs which reduces the incidences of office bickering (Kuhn and Chuck, 2015).
The last strategies used by the organization are by establishing measures that ensures that there are sustainable developments. This is challenging as the healthcare industry is dynamic. Therefore, the organization has recruited research employees whose work is to identify the changes in market demands so that the organization can change its strategies to align with the market demands. This increases their competitive advantages as the organization manages to make changes according to the market demands. This ensures that the organization explores new areas and discovers other opportunities that have not been realized by their competitors. These processes sustain its development effectively (Berlyl Institute, n.d.).
From this discussion, it is evident that these strategic measures are only effective if articulated simultaneously. For example, integrating effective communication within the organization ensures that each employee understands the organization’s visions and missions. This also ensures that the employees understand their responsibilities within the organization (Armbrister, 2012). Working with competent leaders ensures that the team members are committed to achieving the organizations goals. The motivation is transmitted from the top management to employees. The clarity of the organizations directives establishes a foundation that ensures that the employees are held accountable of their actions (Banner Health, 2015).
In summation, Banner Health has sustained their successes by improving the delivery of services. The Banner Health performances have exceeded the internal targets and are reported in the past years to have achieved stretch targets. The organizations financial capacity has been improved such that it can survive any healthcare dynamic trend. Thus, Banner Health is an established and efficient network concerned with improving the community wellbeing (Armbrister, 2012).
References
Armbrister, M. (2012). Just what is Banner Health planning? Northern Colorado Business Report 18(4)p2B-8B Banner Health (2015). Banner Health Medtrack company profile. Database Business complete.