Strategic Health Leadership and Management: A Critical Analysis Essay

This essay provides a critical analysis of an article discussing clinical process redesign in healthcare, specifically within the context of strategic health leadership and management. The analysis includes a summary of the author's central arguments regarding improvements in healthcare delivery through redesigned clinical processes, particularly in emergency care and elective surgery programs. The essay identifies the key elements for successful implementation of transformational change, such as leadership skills, problem-solving abilities, and a focus on the patient journey. It also points out the article's shortcomings, including a lack of supporting evidence for certain claims and the omission of other important considerations like change implementation approaches, cost returns, and communication strategies. The essay concludes by integrating the author's conclusions with implications for health leadership and management, emphasizing the need for healthcare professionals to exhibit leadership, listen to feedback, support multidisciplinary teams, and involve patients in the redesign process. It also highlights the importance of setting performance targets, monitoring implementation, and preparing the organization for change.

Running head: Strategic Health Leadership and Management
Strategic Health Leadership and Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1Strategic Health Leadership and Management
What are the author’s central arguments and conclusion? Are they clearly stated? Are
they supported by evidence and analysis?
The authors argue that redesigning clinical processes have allowed significant
improvement in the healthcare delivery in processes such as emergency care and elective
surgery programs in the New South Wales and Finders Medical Center in South Australia,
which can allow benefits for both the patients as well as the staff. The principles that are
involved in the clinical process have been used in other industries, and have shown
significant advantages due to which now it is also used in the healthcare contexts. The
redesigning of the healthcare has also helped to identify those aspects that are critical to the
strategies for implementation to be successful. The elements identified by the authors
include: leadership skills shown by the senior executives, problem solving skills in a team,
clinical leadership skills, highlighting on the journey of the patient in the clinical setup,
access to clinical data, setting up a high and ambitious goals and targets for performance,
strong and efficient management of staff performance and process that can help to maintain
the improvement process in the clinical setup (McGrath et al, 2008, p 17-22).
The authors have clearly identified and outlined each of the aspects that should be
considered while implementing a transformational change in a healthcare setup. The aspects
includes a) efficient leadership skills. b) Engaging clinical leadership c) Involving
multidisciplinary team for the design of the solution. d) Effective implementation. e) Paying
focus on the clinical journey of the patient. f) Making the patients and their care givers a part
of the healthcare team. g) Access to data is also vital as it helps to inform vital clinical
decisions. h) Stretching the abilities and skills of the workforce. i) Ensuring readiness of the
organization towards change. k) Efficient selection of projects is also vital. l) Identifying if
the change is local or system wide. m) Ensuring flexibility in system and continuous
improvement. (McGrath et al, 2008, p55).

2Strategic Health Leadership and Management
The authors however did not support any of the identified aspects with relevant claims
or analysis. It was however mentioned that the aspects have been incorporated from other
change implementation processes used in other countries, but fails to specify which aspects
have been identified from which country, and therefore is ambiguous.
Is the article lacking information or argumentation that you expected to find?
In the given study, the authors identified several important factors which are needed
to be considered while implementing change in a healthcare setting, and which can determine
the success of the implementation project. It helps to design and inform strategies for
effective implementation of change, and hence can be very useful knowledge in the
implementation and sustenance of transformational change in a healthcare setup (McGrath et
al, 2008, p 20). However there are certain other considerations that also can be considered in
the process which have not been discussed by the authors.
According to Lewis et al. (2016, p13), change can be either implemented within a
context that considers organizations as machines, the workers as the cogs and management as
the control system, or within the context of the organization as a living biological system, and
the functions of the workers as vital processes that keeps the organism alive. This forms the
conversational approach towards change, which begins with the preparation for change,
followed by the process being defined, discovered, dreamt and designed followed by the
objectives being outlined.
Other considerations which have also not been discussed by the authors include:
a) The key processes or tasks or technical services (such as implementing cloud based
or ERP softwares, upgrading existing applications, and process improvement methodologies)

3Strategic Health Leadership and Management
that are important for the improvement of the service delivery and the overall business should
be considered (Pugh, 2016, p2).
b) The returns in costs expected from the implementation of the change management
strategies should be expected to be like in case of any other businesses (Hayes, 2018, p55).
c) Having tangible outcomes for the change process helps to align the results with the
identified goals regarding the timing, costs, and implementation methods which are
communicated through the different levels within the management to ensure effective change
management (Rosemann and Jan vom Brocke, 2015, p19).
d) In the project investment, the change management should be considered as
accelerator or an insurer (Kerzner, 2018, p7).
Also, strategies for change management can includes various other essential elements
such as: identification of the target audience, the communication strategies and tools, the
topics for communication regarding the change, the challenges and risks associated with the
change, planning of the project, structures and components of the communication activities,
examples of the communication activities and identification of the roles and responsibilities
in the implementation of change (Bradway et al., 2015, p5; Shirley, 2016, pq 19-20). The
planning an execution can in turn include aspects like outlining the key performance
indicators (KPI) such as the baseline KPI, implementing the KPI, Training and deployment of
trained personnel, ensuring post production support, and measuring KPI improvements
(Parmenter, 2015, 33; Kazmi et al., 2018, p 2).
The authors conclusion and its implication on health leadership and management
From the main article, it can be concluded that redesigning clinical processes involves
several important considerations and has a significant potential to improve the delivery of

4Strategic Health Leadership and Management
healthcare across various care settings, and can benefit both the patients as well as the staff,
by ensuring the overall wellbeing of the patients and foster professional growth of the staff.
The aspects identified by the authors can help in the effective implementation of the change
processes, since each of the aspect is integrally related to the performance of the healthcare
delivery system. Also, addressing these considerations, it is also possible to ensure the
implementation of continuous improvement strategies as well as allow focus on the clinical
journey of the patient (McGrath et al., 2008, p 24). However, aspects such as the key
processes involved in the change management, cost returns as a result of the change process,
identification of tangible results to assess the progress and success of the change strategies,
and the role of change management to accelerate or insure the change implementation also
should be considered in the process. Additionally, it is important to identify the target
audiences as well as the communication strategies that need to be utilized to share the various
aspects of the change strategies with the different executive and managerial levels.
In the professional practice in healthcare in Australia, these factors imply the
following functions and abilities to be exhibited by healthcare professionals and healthcare
leadership. A) They should exhibit the ability to lead by examples, and show others the way
towards the change and how they can be beneficial. B) They should be able to listen to and
understand the views and feedbacks of the healthcare staff and use it to inform the redesign
process. C) Help and support the development and continuation of multidisciplinary
healthcare team, and identifying ways to communicate information and reporting within the
team more efficiently. D) Involving the clients anf patients needs, expectations and feedbacks
in the redesign process. E) Exhibiting responsibility towards the performance of the team as
well as towards the well being of both the patients and staff. F) Setting up care frameworks or
protocols based on Patient Journeys. G) Identify methods for the evaluation of the staff
performance and how to further develop their skills and abilities. H) Setting up standardized

5Strategic Health Leadership and Management
care delivery models. I) monitoring whether the change strategies have been implemented
and are being followed at every level. J) Setting up performance targets for the staff, and also
revising them periodically, increasing the targets towards better performance and productivity
to ensure the growth of both the individual as well as the organization. K) Helping the
organization to be ready for the change. By such actions, management and leadership in a
healthcare setup can ensure the effective implementation of the change process and thus the
success of the change management (Bradd et al. 2017).

6Strategic Health Leadership and Management
References:
Bradd, P., Travaglia, J. and Hayen, A., 2017. leadership in allied health: a review of the
literature. Asia Pacific Journal of Health Management, 12(1), p.17.
Bradway, Meghan, Eirik Årsand, and Astrid Grøttland. "Mobile Health: empowering patients
and driving change." Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism 26, no. 3 (2015): 114-117.
Hayes, John. The theory and practice of change management. 2018.
Kazmi, Syeda Asiya Zenab, and Marja Naaranoja. "Healthcare Transformation Through
Change Management Process for Innovation." In International Conference on Applied
Human Factors and Ergonomics, pp. 380-389. Springer, Cham, 2018.
Kerzner, Harold. Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John
Wiley & Sons, 2018.
Lewis, Sarah, Jonathan Passmore, and Stefan Cantore. Appreciative inquiry for change
management: Using AI to facilitate organizational development. Kogan Page Publishers,
2016.
McGrath, Katherine M., Denise M. Bennett, David I. Ben-Tovim, Steven C. Boyages, Nigel
J. Lyons, and Tony J. O'Connell. "Implementing and sustaining transformational change in
health care: lessons learnt about clinical process redesign." Medical Journal of Australia 188,
no. 6 (2008): S32.
Parmenter, David. Key performance indicators: developing, implementing, and using
winning KPIs. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
Pugh, Lyndon. Change management in information services. Routledge, 2016.

7Strategic Health Leadership and Management
Rosemann, Michael, and Jan vom Brocke. "The six core elements of business process
management." In Handbook on business process management 1, pp. 105-122. Springer,
Berlin, Heidelberg, 2015.
Shirley, David. Project management for healthcare. CRC Press, 2016.