Healthcare Environment

This report discusses the role of healthcare manager in nursing homes, impact of organisational structure on organisational culture, and different organisational structures in business, health and social care organisations.

Healthcare Environment
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Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Scenario one – Discuss the role of the healthcare manager...................................................3
Scenario two - Impact of organisational structure on organisational culture.........................5
Scenario three – Present different organisational structures in business, health and social care
organisation............................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................11
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INTRODUCTION
Health care environment is a main concern in the area of Medical Services. In order to
maintain healthy environment, it is necessary for healthcare systems to provide extra services for
making the patient feel fresh and healthy. This report is based on three scenarios. The first
scenario covers the role of healthcare manager in nursing homes in which the roles and
responsibilities they perform with in the remit of their practice to make sure that health and
social care services are provided successfully. The second scenario covers the way organisational
structure impacts on the culture of the company. In addition to this, the third scenario covers
different types of organisational structures available within healthcare division along with their
advantages and disadvantages. At brief conclusion is provided in the last based on the overall
report.
Scenario one – Discuss the role of the healthcare manager
A Nursing Home's healthcare manager has to perform various roles and responsibilities
within remit of their practice in order to make sure that successful provision of health and social
care services can be maintained. There are several roles and responsibilities which are performed
by health care manager within their sphere practice of practice. A nursing home manager is
responsible for restoring and promoting the health of patients through developing daily
management as well as long term planning for care area of patient. They also direct and develop
collaboration of staff with multidisciplinary professionals and physicians for providing
psychological and physical support for patient, friends and families. In addition to this, a nursing
manager maintains guidelines of Nursing by writing as well as updating the policies and
procedures and do you usually work in hospitals, nursing care homes and other healthcare
facilities. Their job responsibilities include adopting and executing innovative nursing practices
to enhance the health care services. They are also responsible to recruit, select as well as direct
nursing staff. Apart from this, they support nursing staff job outcomes by counselling, coaching
and disciplining employees.
One of the main responsibilities of nursing home healthcare manager is departmental
coordination and innovation. They can improve the delivery of healthcare services by operating
nursing home which deliver adaptable and reliable services. The aim is to coordinate with
stakeholders and direct them towards common goal. The employees of the Nursing Home like
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technology distributors, insurance companies, patient advocates and healthcare professionals
have personal interest and policies and operations of Nursing Home. In the organisation, funding
innovation is significant and healthcare manager has the responsibility to direct the flow of funds
through third party investors, insurers, long-term investors as well as other sources to maintain
adequate flow of funds. Health care manager required to exercise solid timing for technology
innovation, given that infrastructure of Nursing Home must adapt to new technologies. Apart
from this, it is very much necessary to ensure that new technologies are adopted constantly in
order to gain competitive advantage in market.
The other responsibility of healthcare manager includes facilitating collaboration and
teamwork which is very much essential for managing and operating nursing home successfully.
Managers can influence teamwork by preparing, summarising as well as formatting information
for the consumption of staff. They promote innovative operational approaches and serve as
mediator between strategies, goals and daily activities. They are responsible to oversee initiatives
of team, especially frontline work force. This team work in coordination and cooperation with
each other in order to resolve the issues associated with patient and workflow. Therefore,
manager bridge the gaps in information that make sure that innovation reaches to right outlet.
The administrator of Nursing Home supervises large staff and perform responsibilities to ensure
that high quality services are provided to the patient. The manager is also responsible for
providing staff members with appropriate training and development programme that help in
developing their skills and capabilities and make them able to perform their roles and
responsibilities effectively within the health care setting.
Nursing home manager have to keep abreast of new laws and regulations pertaining to
long-term care facilities and healthcare. They address infractions through formulating policies
and ensuring that they are executed appropriately. The Nursing Home manager is also
responsible to maintain public relations and ensure that all the patients and their families are
satisfied with the care services provided by the nursing home. The manager interacts with
residents, their families and physicians to ensure that good care is being given. Nursing Home
manager work with other healthcare professionals in order to enhance the quality and efficiency
in delivery of healthcare services. They supervisor assistant healthcare managers in health care
facilities and manage overhead cost, billing and patient fee.
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They are responsible for representation of facility in the meeting of investors or meeting of
any governing boards. The communicate with other members, medical staffs as well as the heads
of the department. They are also responsible for keeping and organising the records of services
of Nursing Home like number of beds which are currently being utilised by patients etc. They are
responsible for the change management in organisation and by developing appropriate strategies
and plans, they execute change within healthcare settings in order to improve the delivery of care
services. They staying abreast of new policies, laws and regulations as well as the changes for
health care facilities to adequately comply with the regulations. All these are the roles and
responsibilities which are perform by healthcare manager of Nursing Home. The manager should
be capable of multitasking and handling many distinct responsibilities simultaneously. Apart
from these general responsibilities, the healthcare manager professionals also have the
responsibilities specific to facility.
Scenario two - Impact of organisational structure on organisational culture
Organisational culture can be defining as a concept that underline the core beliefs, values,
assumption and ways of interaction with a company which contributes for the unique
psychological and social environment which exist within an organisation. Further, an explanation
can be made that organisational culture is mainly representing a set of collection of overall
values, practices and workplace expectation that inform and provided guidance for employees
and team members and set a trait and way of operation within a company. Use of Handy’s
culture theory is made to get an implication and better understanding about the different cultures
that can arise in health and social care. The four main type of organisational culture provided by
Handy’s theories are discussed below:
Power culture- It is mainly associated with and focuses on a centralized decision making
process where all the power remains in hand of few people only who are authorised to take
decision and form strategy (Charles Handy Model of Organization Culture, 2020). Implication
of power strategy leads a negative impact on employees’ motivation and creativity level and they
are not allowing to participate in decision making but facilitates a fast and form decision making
with a small company.
Task Culture- Under this form of culture main focus and emphasis is given to a specific
task and project where employees with common skills and ideas work together to perform on a
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common task. Implication of task culture facilities a more specialisation and effective designing
of work within a company.
People culture- This a culture where individual employees seemed to have considerable
more freedom to act in a in dependable way and considered as more important than the
organisation. There is lack of team bonding and connection in the firm where people culture
prevails as they never get attracted with each other.
Role Culture- It is taken as most formalised culture which tends to have more clear rules
and responsibilities which are properly delegated and bifurcated among the employees on the
basis of their skills, qualification and specialisation. Thus, role culture provides a chaos and
confusion free workplace where the job and roles of each employees is properly defined that
have positive impact on their performance.
An analysis can be made that a change in organisational structure lead a significant
impact on organisational culture as a divisional form of structure mainly based on task culture
where all the duties and roles are assigned in the basis of some common skills or competencies
where as a hierarchical form of organisational structure mainly emphasis on the power culture
where the employees and management present at the top of hierarchy tends to have maximum
authority and decision making power.
With respect to current case study based on the partnership between two health and social
care companies where a small hierarchical GP surgery joining together with a flat structure social
enterprise that is run to by social worker is leading a change un existing culture of both
organisations. It has been analysed that, the small GP surgery company tends to have a power
culture as they have limited number of employees thus tend to have centralised decision making
process. But at the time, when it comes in a partnership with a new flat structure social enterprise
a significant change in their culture is seemed as they would know need to have a more emphasis
on the skills and competencies of each employee for better bifurcation of work without any kind
of chaos or confusions. Thus, an impact of change in organisational culture is seen as now both
the companies need to change their culture from power culture to role culture to have better
bifurcation and division of work among its employees on the basis of their skills and traits to
have higher efficiency and performance level.
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Scenario three – Present different organisational structures in business, health and social care
organisation
An organizational structure system is referred as the system which outlines the way certain
activities are directed accomplish the goals of company. These activities involve roles,
responsibilities and rules. The structure of organisation determines the way information flows
between different levels within the organisation. For instance: in the decentralized structure, the
power of decision making is distributed among different levels of company, while in the
centralized structure, the decisions flow from top down. Organizational structure is used in every
business organisation. The defines a particular hierarchy in the company and defines the job of
each employee and the way it fits in the system of organisation. The structuring gives a business
entity with visual representation of the way it is shaped and the way it can best move ahead in
accomplishing its goals. Different types of organizational structure along with their advantages
and disadvantages are as follows:
Functional organizational structure: under this structure, the individuals who do same
task are grouped collectively on the basis of their specialty. So, people with similar specialty are
grouped collectively in this organizational structure. This structure breaks up an organisation on
the basis of specialization of the employees. Dividing the company into departments consist of
operations, marketing, sales etc. is the act of utilizing functional organizational structure.
Advantages of functional structure:
1. The communication in this structure is frictionless in the department.
2. The career growth path of the employees is clear in this structure.
3. The roles and responsibilities of each individual is fixed and facilitate easy accountability
of work.
4. Employees in this structure of organisation are grouped by their skills and knowledge,
which enable them to accomplish high performance.
5. As all the departments have clearly defined responsibilities, the work is not duplicated.
Disadvantages of functional organizational structure:
1. The mentality of department is self-centered in this structure. The functional managers
pay attention to their departments as well as ignore the interest of others.
2. Among the distinct departments, lack of teamwork is there in this structure.
3. Because of bureaucratic hierarchy, the process of decision making is slow.
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4. The functional department may be distracted through the goals of department, instead of
organizational goals.
5. Due to repetitive work, employees may feel bored which cause loss of enthusiasm.
Divisional organizational structure: in this type of structure, the workers are grouped in
team. In this structure, each division can correspond to geographies or products of company. All
the necessary resources are containing in each division and the functions within these to support
the specific geography or product line. As it organizes activities of business around geographies,
product and service or market group, therefore an organisation could have operating groups. This
approach is used when the process of decision making must be clustered at division level in order
to react quickly to local situations.
Advantages of divisional organizational structure:
1. Each division in this type of organisation structure can specialize and emphasized its
efforts on specific service, product or market.
2. This structure renders a great deal of flexibility for the company as each of the division
perform its operations separately and emphasize on most pressing issues.
3. In this structure of organisation, the decision making is quick as the manager of the
division is not required to consult with other division members to take any decision.
4. As all the activities of each particular division is performed independently, therefore, the
outcomes can be assessed easily.
Disadvantages of divisional organizational structure:
1. This organizational structure leads to duplicity of functions as the entire set of functions
is needed for all divisions.
2. As every head of the division wants to develop his supremacy, it leads to conflicts among
different heads of divisions.
3. Sometimes, each division try to depict better performance even at cost of other
department, which shows selfish attitude and simultaneously hits the interest of concern
as whole.
Matrix organizational structure: this structure most complex and confusing structure and
its use is least within the organisation. It matrixes the employees across distinct departments,
divisions or superiors. It groups individuals into specialization functional departments and then
separate them into divisional products and projects. In this structure, the members of team are
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provided with more autonomy as well as expected to take much responsibilities for work. It is
the mixture of two or more types of structure of company. The chain of command in this
structure are usually two, where the team members of the project have two managers or bosses.
Advantages of matrix organizational structure:
1. The main advantage of the organizational structure is that it brings collectively the highly
skilled members of a team from distinct departments which enable the company to
capitalize on resources which the organisation already has.
2. It combines the functional and project management structure in order to enhance the
efficiency, adapt to the changes in markets and respond quickly to the demand of market.
3. The structure offers workforce with the opportunity to strengthen communication skills,
interpersonal skills and other skills because of nature of using more than one manager.
Disadvantages of matrix organizational structure:
1. One among the very common disadvantage of this type of organizational structure is that
the roles of the manager is not defined clearly.
2. The role of team members is also not defined properly in the project or separation of
responsibilities among employees’ project roles and functional roles are not clear.
3. It can also lead to work overload on the members of team.
In order to set up a new organisation which will assist in promoting the service user
involvement in Southwark, functional organisational structure is the most appropriate one for
Clinical Commissioning Group as in this structure, the entire team is managed through
experienced individual with high level of skills and competencies which help in managing the
work effectively. Apart from this, in this structure the communication is frictionless which
provides an opportunity to the managers of the organisation to communicate all the necessary
information effectively to the employees in order to offer high quality health services to the
patients. This also help in accomplishing the goals and objectives of company in more effective
way. Thus, using functional organisation structure is the most appropriate one for running the
organisation successfully and leads it towards growth and success.
CONCLUSION
As per the above mentioned report, it has been concluded that the care environment must be
safe, satisfied and empowering. A safety culture is paramount in which all the health care
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workers, managers, leaders and other ancillary staff have responsibility to perform with
accountability, environment, professionalism, effectiveness, efficiency and transparency. A
health care manager performs various roles and responsibilities facilitating team work and
collaboration, following laws and regulations etc. Role culture is the most appropriate culture for
the organisation as all the employees have clear roles and responsibilities that help them in
leading the organisation towards success. Apart from this, the functional structure the
organisation to accomplish organisational goals in more effective manner.
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Online:
Charles Handy Model of Organization Culture. 2020. [Online] Available Through:<
https://www.managementstudyguide.com/charles-handy-model.htm>.
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