Healthcare Organization External Environment Assessment Report

This report provides an external environment assessment of Sentara Leigh Hospital located in Norfolk, Virginia. It examines the impact of political, economic, social, and technological factors on the hospital's operations and marketing strategies. The assessment covers the demographics of the region, the influence of conservative viewpoints on healthcare utilization, and the economic diversity of Norfolk. The technological advancements within the hospital, such as advanced imaging services and online patient portals, are also discussed. The report identifies five potential threats, including healthcare utilization among immigrants and the rising costs of advanced technologies, and five opportunities, such as improved funding and the hospital's specialization in breast cancer care. The analysis includes a diagram showing the interrelationships between the environmental forces and the organization. The report references relevant literature and provides a comprehensive overview of the external factors influencing the hospital's success.

Running head: EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ASSESSMENT
External Environment Assessment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ASSESSMENT
Introduction
Every organization has its own culture and everything that affects the ability of an
organization to respect and compete with the changes successfully with-respect to the
external environment affects the overall failure and success of the organization. The main
external environmental factors that affect an organization include political, economic,
technological and social (Fernandez & Rainey, 2017). The following external environment
assessment is based on development of the report over the external environmental factors that
affecting the delivery of care and marketing of a selected healthcare organization. In this
report, the main healthcare organization of choice is Sentara Leigh Hospital.
About the hospital
Sentara Leigh Hospital (2019) is located in the Norfolk, Virginia, USA. The hospital
is equipped with 250 beds and is specialized in orthopedic, gynecological and urological
services.
Affect of the external environment factors
The politics of Virginia have gone through a series of historical events and chance in
demographics. During the latter half of the 21st century, the northern part of Virginia is
colonized with educated people along with immigrants while many areas becoming liberal in
attitudes of voting. The southern part of Virginia is more rural and conservative. Norfolk is
located in the southeastern part of Virginia and thus it can be said that it is colonized with
rural and orthodox people. Gardner, Johnson and Wiehe (2015) are of the opinion that
conservative people from the rural area are more inclined towards contemporary medicines
and the less likely to take avail healthcare access spontaneously. This conservative thought
process creates a gap in the usage of the overall healthcare services of Sentara.

EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ASSESSMENT
Norfolk, Va. is regarded as the cultural and commercial center of Hampton Roads.
Hampton Roads is the major military center for the United States Navy, it also has several
commercial ports, known as a tourism spot and has headquarters of companies like
BlackHawk Products Group (Magnini, Calvert and Walker 2018). Thus from the economic
perspectives, Norfolk is diverse a this helps the hospital to attract a diverse group of the
healthcare service users and this is the reason why Sentara hospital is brimmed with advanced
services like advance imaging service, neuroscience and comprehensive breast care services.
Under technological and social perspectives, it can be stated that hospital provides
services with significant technological advancement for example providing a comprehensive
care for the breast cancer patient. Their website has a detailed tabulation about patient
information, billing information and visitors information that can be accessed online
depending on the patients’ or the administrative login. Under the social ground, it can be
stated that hospital is responding to the gender equity issues by reviewing the salaries of both
the male and female nurses and the doctors. This is the reason why Sentara Leigh Hospital
has received Magnet recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center in the year
2015 for excellence on the nursing turnover and advancement in the implementation of
advanced nursing interventions (Sentara Leigh Hospital, 2019). This external recognition
coming national agencies can be regarded as the external factors promoting organizational
development.
The first five apparent threats that the organization might experience
(i) Lack of proper healthcare utilization among the immigrants
(ii) The difficulty in installation of the medical equipments to location or lack of
transportation

EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ASSESSMENT
(iii) Increase in the healthcare costs for advancement technologies use in the
healthcares setup
(iv) higher influence of the political leaders affecting the growth and development of
the organization
(v) Inability of recruit experienced doctors as the position is far away from the main
point of operation of virgenia
Five opportunities
 Improved funding
 Cultural and ethical diversity in human resource
 Proper technological advancements in the medical service
 Increase in the retention of the nursing workforce due to proper economic funding
 No proper market competitors for providing care for breast cancer and advanced
quality neuro-imaging

Sentara Leigh Hospital
Political factors
Immigrants’ filtration and lack of proper urbanization decreasing the rate of healthcare utilizations
Economic factors
Social factors
Technical factors
There are several head-quarters
in the Norflok that promoting
economic advancements of the
hospital
eral groups of people from diverse cultural backgrounds helping to enrich the human workforce
Technical advancements is reflected in the presence of the advance imaging techniques and thus supporting technical growth
Running head: EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ASSESSMENT

Running head: EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ASSESSMENT
References
Fernandez, S. & Rainey, H.G., (2017). Managing successful organizational change in the
public sector. In Debating Public Administration (pp. 7-26). Routledge.
Gardner, M., Johnson, S., & Wiehe, M. (2015). Undocumented immigrants’ state and local
tax contributions. Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy
Magnini, V.P., Calvert, E. & Walker, M.A. (2018). The Economic and Fiscal Impacts of
Agritourism in Virginia.
Sentara Leigh Hospital. (2019). Home. Access date: 27th September 2019. Retrieved from:
https://www.sentara.com/hampton-roads-virginia/hospitalslocations/locations/sentara-
leigh-hospital/about-us/nursing.aspx

Running head: EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ASSESSMENT

Running head: EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ASSESSMENT
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