Healthcare Leadership and Strategic Planning

The provided assignment delves into the crucial aspects of leadership and strategic planning within the healthcare sector. It encompasses a review of various leadership theories and competency frameworks, along with an analysis of strategic planning methodologies used by healthcare organizations. The assignment likely requires students to evaluate real-world examples of successful healthcare strategy implementation, drawing upon provided case studies or research papers.

Leadership and Strategy
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Contents
Section A.....................................................................................................................................................2
Question 1- Leadership and its approaches..............................................................................................2
Leader’s Profile.......................................................................................................................................2
Transformational approach of leadership................................................................................................3
Question 2- Assessment of the role of Tracey Burn...............................................................................6
Section B.....................................................................................................................................................9
Concept of Strategic planning..................................................................................................................9
Strategic Analysis..................................................................................................................................10
Factors affecting the Strategic Planning............................................................................................10
Strategy formulation..............................................................................................................................12
Evaluation of the Strategies...................................................................................................................13
Implementation of the Strategy..............................................................................................................13
Relevant strategic plan for the organizational change- UW health organization....................................13
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................18
References.................................................................................................................................................19
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Section A
Question 1- Leadership and its approaches
Leadership is very significant part of the management of the hospitals and any other
organizations. Leadership is a very crucial process as it involves the communication between the
leader and the other staff to motivate them to work hard to achieve the organizational goals.
According to many scholars, the leadership is defined as the ability to provide the direction to the
team towards the future goals and objectives and build some strategies to manage all the
activities in the organization. However, it is also explained as the process that involves planning,
organizing, controlling and directing. Moreover, the leadership is to perform the actions by the
individuals or the group as per the instructions or guidelines of the leader. There are many
authors and researchers who gave different meanings of the leadership. The most important thing
about the leadership is that it has the power to bring a huge change in the organization. There are
two types of the leadership- one is formal and the second one is informal. A leadership is said to
be formal, when the managers of the hospitals, states its powers and in the framework of legal
approval by the hospitals. An informal leadership is defined when the staff member itself
motivates the other person (Jones and Bartlett, 2011).
Leader’s Profile
Mrs. Tracey burn is the Chief executive director of the Nursing Department of the King edger
Hospitals. She is very famous and well know personality that motivational, intelligent and hard
working. As an executive director of the nursing, she used to make plans and control the
discharge process at the hospital. Despite of this, Burns also conducts meetings and adjust the
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schedule of the nurses to provide the accurate services to its patients. Some of the leadership
responsibilities performed by the Burns are motivation to the staff, direction, controlling and
evaluation of the staff as well as to improve the process of admissions and discharge in the case
of Accident and emergency (A & E) wards.
Transformational approach of leadership
There are many approaches of the leadership. After analyzing the case study, it is found that
transformational leadership is the most appropriate theory applied to the leader’s role,
achievements and their nature. The main focus of this approach is to motivate, guide and directed
its followers towards the goals of the company (Sharma & Jain, 2013). Talking about the main
goal of the Edger hospital, then it is the improvement of the discharge process at the hospital.
The problems faced by the patients are many like placing of the patients in the wrong beds,
delays in the discharge, increasing length of stay of the patients, high cost of admission, and
increased number of complaints by the patients. As after knowing these problems, Rodger
Andrew who is the Chief executive officer of the hospital decided to give the opportunity to the
burn to handle all these problems and lead in every department. She makes use of the
transformational approach by emphasizing on the employee’s commitment towards the main
goals.
In the literature review, it has been seen that transformational leadership is defined as the
empowerment of the others members to make them busy and work together to achieve the goals
for the preferred future. In the review of the literature, the researcher Russell and Swansburg
revealed the four main aspects of the transformational approach of the leadership. These four
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elements or components are- Management of attention, trust management, management of the
meaning and self.
In the trust management, the decisions made by the leaders are based on the equality, honesty
and fairness. All these decisions made by the leader will be respected, followed and implemented
by the staff nurses as well as the staff of the A & E department. Also the judgement given by the
burn is consistent and sound. The management of the attention can be achieved by focusing on
the vision, goals and outcomes. As a leader, you know the skills of the staff members and
utilizing their skills in an effective way demonstrates the meaning of the self. Every health
organization or national health system (NHS) will be based on how it serves the community and
how it is performed to achieve the vision and mission of the company (Gosling, et al., 2003).
Talking more about the leadership approach, the leaders continue to gain the management as
well as the leadership skills to face the problems and make a strategic planning to solve and
control the problematic situation. The management of meaning refers to the staff encouragement
towards the commitment with the help of communication strategies and builds a strong culture
by conducting meetings, group discussions where the creativity and the innovation of the other
staff members are highly appreciated. Similarly, the Burn used to conduct the meetings and
workshops with the staff members to improve the discharge process at the hospital. These
meetings and workshops are valuable for the staff to direct them towards their commitments.
Moving further, Russell and Roussel focused on the fact that in transformational approach of the
leadership, it is very important that organization and the personnel will benefit from the
achievement of the goals and all these fulfillment of the goals is achieved by encouraging and
empowering the staff nurses as well as the other members of the hospital to trust their leaders
and keep some vision in their minds about the organization. It has been analyzed that the
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transformational leadership can be experienced better in the health care organizations and in the
emergency department as those are some of the situations that are unstable and changing very
rapidly. The reason is that leaders like Burn will encourage the employee’s needs and thoughts
and also able to acknowledge the uncertainty and be flexible accordingly. In his approach, the
best way of motivating and empowering the employees of the hospitals is to appreciate their
views and involve them into the decision making process which make them feel important part
of the organization and part of the vision of the organization as well (Abri, 2011).
Apart from this approach, there many other leadership styles like Transactional, autocratic,
participative and Laissez Faire.
Transactional approach: - This is the second approach of the leadership that focus more on the
exchange of rewards and targets between the employee and the organization. According to this
approach, the staff members can be motivated by giving them rewards for their efficient
performance. This approach is mainly focused on the completion of the tasks and rewards. This
approach is not that much used by the Burn in this case study, but she is thinking to give these
type of rewards in the future period of time.
Laissez-Faire: - As this approach of leadership puts low emphasis on performance and people.
This style is not good for the situations where employees need supervision to work so it reduces
the productivity of employees and doesn’t provide good results.
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Question 2- Assessment of the role of Tracey Burn
In this case study the approaches of leadership and the strategies used by the Burn are
appropriate. If I had been appointed in the place of the Tracey Burn, then I will also prefer to
have the transformational approach to handle the things as this approach is found most suitable
and reliable as compared to other approaches of the leadership styles. As with the
transformational approach, the inspiration and empowerment of the nurses and medical officers
results in the high growth of the hospitals by building a strong relationship between the
employee and leader. As a leader, Burn possess all the qualities or the characteristics of the
transformational leaders. These qualities are as follows: -
 The ability of the leader to develop a sense of capability in the employees
 Offer vision and directed their team towards the commitments to achieve that vision
 Management of the trust among all the staff members
 Timely performance of the tasks
 At the time crisis or in the critical situations, to manage and take the risks effectively to
solve the problems.
 Effective communication between the staff and the leader.
Talking about more about the transformational approach, Burn treats all its team members of
nursing as well as A & E departments in a very friendly way and make them realize that delay in
the discharge process creates problems for the patients. Hence, a relationship of trust has been
developed between the staff and the leader. The tasks performed by the Burn are appreciable as
she is very much concerned about the needs and values of its employees (Association, 2015).
Burn conducts workshops as well as individual meetings with every staff member to understand
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their feelings, needs and problems and reasons of their low performance. In these meetings, Burn
used to share the responsibilities and duties of the staff because of which the employees will
work harder and perform better to meet the goals of the hospital. Even I will also do the same
things to handle the situation and to improve the admission- discharge at the hospital.
Furthermore, she also used to hold the general meeting to share the planning strategies for the
improvement of the discharge process and also take the ideas from the staff to take the best
decisions for the king edger hospital (Abri, 2011). The involvement of the nurses, doctors and
many medical officers in the decision making and all these employees feels an integral part of
the organization. As the Burn believes in the equality and this is the reason that most of the
employees follow her decisions for the accomplishment of the goals. In simple words, the role
or activities performed by the Tracey Burn are as follows: -
 As a leader, she plans, organize, direct and controls and align the schedule systems of the
employees
 Delegation and allocation of the functions
 Organizing workshops for the employees on the discharge process at the hospital
 Development of the employee knowledge and skills
 Ongoing training programs for the employees
Moving further, all these tasks leads to positive outcomes and increased the staff commitment,
achievement of the goals and high job satisfaction. The skills and the knowledge of the staff
members is developed by providing them the online job trainings at the King Edgar hospital. The
nurses and medical officers will be able to handle the things more effectively after taking these
training programs as these will make the employees more capable and knowledgeable. The
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Transactional approach of the leadership also used by the Burn as she also offers the monthly
reward to the employees who will perform better and effectively in the future
(Nanjundeswaraswamy & Swamy, 2014). This is the best way to motivate the employees. This
leadership style of the Burn creates a situation of the give and take like give higher performance
and take attractive incentives in return. This is an exchange of the rewards and performance.
Also, this will also create a feeling of competition among the employees to perform better. The
movement of the senior physicians into the emergency wards is also a very effective initiative
taken by the Edward in the year of 2003. After all, the problem of the discharge process at the
King Edgar will be resolved and productivity will also increase.
Therefore, it is concluded that the role of leader played by the Tracey Burn at the King Edgar
Hospital is playing a very significant role to improve the discharge process as well as to resolve
the other problems facing by the patients. The patient satisfaction is also important to build a
good image of the hospital and the entire national health system of the country. If the company
appointed me as a leader, then I also followed the similar approaches to motivate the employees
as well as to solve the problems. The transformational leadership approach is the most effective
leadership styles used by the most of the hospitals. Leadership and the management are the two
separate concepts, but they are interconnected with each other as the leadership is used as the
best strategy in the management. Leadership is the part of the strategic management. Therefore,
all these tasks of the leadership lead to positive outcomes and increased the staff commitment,
achievement of the goals and high job satisfaction (Hintea, et al., 2009).
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Section B
Concept of Strategic planning
There are many definitions given by the different scholars to explain the meaning of the strategic
planning. Strategic planning is defined as a plan of action by focusing more on the available
resources, to set the priorities and motivating the employees to perform well to achieve the goals
of the organization. However, Strategic planning is the disciplined efforts made by the
organizations to take the best decisions and to give the directions to the company with regard to
its main focus on the future, how to achieve the goals, why it wants to achieve these objectives,
what will company do to achieve these goals in the future. Moreover, strategic planning is not
only about the directions and actions to get the success, but also focus on how to determine the
results.
There are many frameworks or the methods are used to develop a strategic plan. AS in the case
study, it is found that the King Edgar is the famous hospital and facing many problems with
regard to the admission and discharge process. As the problem was increasing day by day so
Andrew took a decision to handover the responsibilities to Burn and lead the organization. The
Burn used many strategies to solve the various problems (Gordon, 1998). The different attributes
of the strategic framework are divided into different categories and these are shown below: -
1. Strategic Analysis
2. Strategy formulation
3. Strategy evaluation
4. Execution of the Strategy/ Implementation of the Strategy
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Strategic Analysis
Before formulating any strategy, it is very important to analyze the working environment of the
hospital. There are many factors that need to be considered while making the strategic planning
in the internal and external environment.
Factors affecting the Strategic Planning
There are two types of the factors affecting the strategic management – one is internal and
second is the external environment. The Internal environmental factors are the communication,
leadership, decision making, job design and external environment factors are political and the
technological factors (Perera & Peiro, 2012).
Internal environment
 Communication: -In the King Edgar hospital, the most important factor that affects the
planning is the poor communication. As we know, communication is the process of
sharing their own ideas and thoughts with the leaders to take the best decisions. A
Decision and the communication are the closely related aspects as the staff nurses and
other medical officers will feel an important part of the organization and perform better,
if the importance is given to their ideas. The bad communication or zero communication
may lead to the failing of strategic planning and negative results for the organizational
performance.
 Leadership: - In the case study, the leadership is playing a very important as the Tracey
Burns was appointed as a leader to build strategies to handle the delays of the discharge.
Therefore, the strategic planning is successful only if the health organizations have that
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leader who can use its skills and capabilities and has the ability to motivate the
employees to perform well towards the goal of the organization. A good leader is always
important for the successful implementation of the strategies. The supervision is very
important while the strategies put into actions. The actions performed by all the
employees should be thoroughly analyzed and assessed by the leaders or the managers in
the organizations.
 Decision Making: - Decision making is an internal factor which is significant in the
strategic management. The decisions can either be good or bad. In the strategic planning,
there are various alternatives available and it is very important to choose one best
alternative among all other alternatives. The bad decisions always have a negative impact
on the growth of the organizations (Harrison, 2010).
 Job Design: - The leaders in the organization have the responsibility to delegate the jobs
or tasks according to their skills. As burn decided to align the schedule of the receptionist
as well as the nurses in other activities as per their skills and abilities. The delegation of
the work is the important part to solve the problem of the delay of the discharge
activities. As a leader, it is the duty of burn to decide which task is performed by which
individual.
External Environment
Political Factors: -It refers to the factors related to the interference of the government as the King
Edgar hospital trust is the merger of 3 hospitals- clover, Frior and Bronte. These hospitals are
merged as the government wants to reduce the duplication and improve the services of the
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national health system. The political factors need to be analyzed in the case of those
organizations which operate in the political and legal environment. The changes in the policies of
the organizations are also the most important thing to be analyzed by the organization.
Technological Factors: - Changes in technology have posed a great challenge to the companies
which need to be considered significant by the organization. Since the competition in the market
is so high. The advancement in the technologies has a great impact on the working practices in
the organization (World Health Organization, 2011).
Strategy formulation
The discharge planning of the hospital involves many activities and the strategies formulate by
the Edward Helen. The initiative taken by the hospital is to change the culture of the hospital and
improve the performance of discharge. The second initiative taken was the creation of the
cartoon posters for the patients and caregivers to tell them how the discharge planning fit is on
the top priority of the trust. At the same time, Edward and the Burn together organized a
workshop for the promotion of the ownership and the planning of the discharge. The relationship
with the employees of the hospitals needs to be strong between the physician and the
management leaders. All these initiatives were taken to deal with the problem of the discharge
delays (Almalki, et al., 2017).
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Evaluation of the Strategies
The available options and the resources available to achieve the long term goals is need to be
evaluated. As the Edward and the Burn was able to secure the funding and thinking to utilize the
available resources like reinvestment plans and then put all the senior employees at the A and E
department as this department need more care and attention.
Implementation of the Strategy
Strategy implementation is the last stage of the planning process and it is found very complex to
implement these initiatives. Initially, Burn put all the initiative on hold and decided to wait for
the right time and establishment of the ongoing changes. Suddenly, in 2003, the community care
act came into existence and then Burn implement their initiative to get the best results of these
discharge planning. In the year of 2003, at the time of the second workshop, several positive
outcomes of the initiatives have been seen (Knowles, 2013).
Relevant strategic plan for the organizational change- UW health organization
The relevant strategic plan of UW health organization is useful to review and refocus on the
strategies to bring a change in the organization and this plan is also divided into many phases and
these are discussed as below:
1. Defining Mission, vision and values
Mission: our reason for being
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
This is the written statement of the final aim of the organization. As the mission of the UW
health organization is to focus on the 4S- services, Scholarship, Science and the social
responsibility in order to improve the health organization without any compromises. Therefore,
the mission of the company indicates the overall aim of the organization and that mission should
be short, clear and concise.
Vision: Our place in the World
The vision statement is also in the written form and it indicates the future goal of the
organization. As the UW health company also has the vision to work together in order to
improve the services of the health care system and reduce the duplication and also take care of
the well-being of the people of the Wisconsin.
Values: - These are the set rules and principles need to be followed at the time of the strategic
planning. These values include the ethical code of the conduct of the organization. Some of the
values that UW health organization considered are as follows-
 Integrity
 Innovation
 Compassion
 Accountability
 Respect
 Excellence
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
2. Strategy formulation- Refocus and Review
The strategic plan of the UW Health for the year of 2010 to 2014 represents the true steps in the
development of the single plan with a common mission, vision and strategic goals. As it has been
seen that the UW health is also a merger of the 3 partners-UW Hospital and Clinics, UW
Medical Foundation and UW School of Medicine and Public Health. This phase of the strategic
plan includes the many stages like analysis of the internal and external environment. These
stages are as follows:
 Analysis of the internal environment
 Analysis of the external environment
 SWOT Matrix
 Strategic Alternatives
 Strategic objectives
3. Operational planning
The operational planning to bring the change in the hospital is to achieve the strategic goals by
appointing active, experienced and senior physicians at the emergency department. There are
many action steps that can be taken to achieve these strategic goals (Douglas, et al., 2015). The
Strategic plan 2010 -2014 of the UW Health is presented as below-
Strategic Goals of the UW Health Action Plan
Best working Environment  Provide job trainings for the employees to educate
them about the current health care working
environment (UWHealth, 2013).
 Workforce planning to increase the quality of work
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
 Establishment of the shared criteria for the selection
of the employees
Quality Distinction  Transfer of the experienced and senior physicians in
the emergency ward.
 Implement the training management systems for the
leaders to deliver the training further to improve the
quality of services.
 Alignment of the needs of the employees of the UW
Health
A Clinical model of care  Introduction of the interdisciplinary model of care
for the family centered patients.
 Implement leadership model for all the nurses and
the physicians (UW Health Team, 2017).
Primary care  Implementation of the redesigned model of the face
to face workflow
Market Focus  Create external or geographic strategy and plan for
the future.
 SWOT analysis for the growth and to grab the
opportunities
Patient and Family experiences  Reduce the delays and waiting periods of admission
and discharge for the satisfaction of the Patients.
 Improving the communication standards
 Providing Consultancy services (UWHC, 2012).
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4. Assessing the results
The outcome of any initiative has been always an uncertain. It can be positive or negative. The
assessment of the results is significant as to find out the errors and mistakes in the previous
strategic planning and also identify, which factor is less evaluated among all the factors that
affecting the organizational change in this hospital trust. In the case of the UW health, the
successful results have been analyzed over 5 years and there is a long list of the accomplishments
to celebrate (Leahy, 2015).
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Running Head: Leadership and strategy
Conclusion
In this report, there are two parts in which one part is about the leadership and its approaches and
the second part is related to the strategic planning. The conclusion of this report is that leadership
and the management is the important parts to bring the organizational change for the growth of
the organization. On the basis of the Case study, the Edwards and the Tracey Burn take lot of
initiatives to achieve the vision and mission of the King Edgar hospital. The King Edgar hospital
is also the merger of three hospitals and the initiatives taken by the burn and Edward are towards
the achievement of the long term objectives and to reduce the delay of the discharge of the
patients. It has been analyzed that the burn has decided to align the duties of the receptionist as
well as the nurses in other activities, as per their skills and abilities. The delegation of the work is
the important part to solve the problem of the delay of the discharge activities. However, Edward
wants to shift senior physicians in the accident and emergency department. In the case study, the
approach of leadership used by the leader is the transformational approach which focuses on
transforming the behaviors and attitudes of the staff nurses, ward sisters, medical officers,
physicians by motivating them. The rewards for the better performance are considered as the best
method to motivate and encourage the members of the staff. The leadership activities are the part
of the strategic planning and all these activities will have the positive outcome, if these strategies
will implement properly. Therefore, the report outlines the role of the leadership and the strategic
planning in the organizational change.
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