Analysis of Change Management in Health and Social Care: A Report

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FACILITATING CHANGE IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
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Executive Summary
Healthcare and social services are the most essential sectors that have influenced the life of
people in numerous ways. In recent years, Health care services have advanced a lot due to the
changes in legislation or advanced technologies. But these changes in the healthcare sector have
also introduced many challenges in the form of lack of proper medical facilities, employee
dissatisfaction, lack of financial resources. The assignment here tries to analyze the key factors
leading to the changes in the healthcare services and their associated challenges. It further
focuses to find out whether the strategies used by the healthcare organizations are competent to
allow the changes in the operational framework in a smooth way.
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Part 1: Factors driving changes in health and social care (LO1).....................................................4
1.1 Evaluating the key factors that bring changes in health and social care................................4
1.2 Analyzing the major challenges brought by the key factors..................................................6
Part 2: Evaluating recent changes in health and social care (LO2).................................................7
2.1 Proposing strategy to measure the recent changes.................................................................7
2.2 Measuring the impact of recent changes on the set criteria...................................................7
2.3 Evaluating the overall impact of the recent changes..............................................................8
2.4 Proposing ways as a response to recent changes...................................................................9
Part 3: Discussion on the principles of waste management ( LO3)...............................................10
3.1 Explaining the key principles of change management.........................................................10
3.2 Explaining ways in which the changes in health and social care services are planned.......10
3.3 Proposing ways to monitor the recent changes in Health and social care...........................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
Reference List................................................................................................................................14
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Introduction
Health and Social Care Services the services that are mainly provided by health and social care
agencies. The Human Health and social care sector is mainly responsible for carrying out all
health and social care services in various part of the world. The Human Health sector consists of
main hospitals, medical nursing homes, rehabilitation centre and so on. Nowadays health and
social care sector have developed at an alarming rate with the help of new initiatives taken by the
social bodies or the government, adoption of technologically advanced methods (Ambrose-
Miller and Ashcroft, 2016). The people have started believing that good health not only helps to
promote goodness in society but also helps in increasing the contribution of an individual
towards the country’s economy. Health and social care services are closely linked because the
health services are often provided by NGOs and social trust which are social bodies that help to
provide health treatment to all people without any discrimination.
The particular assignment mainly focuses on analyzing the impact of the key factors that are
responsible for facilitating change in Health and Social care services. The assignment also tries
to measure the recent impact of the recent changes in health and social care and propose
appropriate recommendations in response to the impacts. The assignment also tries to evaluate
the principles of change management and tries to propose ways in which the recent changes in
health and social care services can be monitored.
Part 1: Factors driving changes in health and social care (LO1)
1.1 Evaluating the key factors that bring changes in health and social care
Health and social care services are the essential services that help to promote well being of the
population which in turn helps to increase the productivity of the population thereby contributing
to the economy of the country. Health and social care services is a broader concept that aims to
provide good health to all individuals irrespective of any discrimination on the basis of caste,
gender, race, religion. In recent year’s health and social care services have changed a lot with the
adoption of new technologies or policies and so on. According to Batterham et al. (2016), the
external and internal environmental factors play an important role in bringing about changes in
the health and social care services.
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The internal factors basically refer to those factors that generally occur within the healthcare
sectors or social agencies. The internal factors mainly include the management decision or the
opinion or viewpoint or a strategy adopted by the agency to provide the best health and social
services to the consumers. Often it is seen that organizations change their strategy depending
upon the needs of the consumers or the market scenario. As for the health and social care sector,
the agencies working under these sectors change their business strategies according to the needs
of the patient or market scenario. Secondly, a major internal factor that brings in changes in the
type of services provided by the healthcare sector is the change in the workforce. For example,
the employs who have been working in a particular hospital for many years is likely to work
efficiently as he/she will be acquainted with the procedures of the hospital (Bovaird et al., 2015).
While an employee who has been newly recruited will not be able to perform the tasks properly.
Another important internal factor is the change in management authority. The management
department is solely responsible to take up the decisions of the entire organizational and
operational framework of the hospitals. A change in the management authority or leadership can
totally bring in a big change in the operational framework of the hospital as different manager or
leader will have different viewpoint and vision towards the booming business of healthcare
services.
Apart from the internal factors the external factor also plays an important role in bringing about
huge changes in the healthcare and social service sector (Bradley et al., 2016). External factors
basically refer to the changing governmental legislation and policies, or the changing society,
advanced technology.
The changing trends in modernization have given way to the emergence of new technological
advancement. The adoption of new technologies by the hospital authority often leads to changes
in the entire organizational structure although it promotes better medical facilities. A second
external factor that often brings ion change in the services is the changing healthcare policies and
legislation by the government. With the change in the governmental policies, the hospital
authority also has to change their operational set up to conduct their business according to the
terms of the government. Apart from this the changing’s needs of the society also bring about
major changes in the type of services rendered by the hospital organization. For example:
Nowadays people generally desire to get medical services from multi-specialty hospitals. This
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changing desire has prompted many small nursing homes to collaboration with many multi-
specialty hospitals.
Figure 1: Key Factors Leading to Changes in Health Care services
(Source: Created by Author)
1.2 Analyzing the major challenges brought by the key factors.
With the changing trends of modernization, many new changes have occurred in various sector
of services be it manufacturing, transport communication or healthcare and social service sector.
As opined by Castro et al. (2016), although adopting new changes are beneficial for the
expansion and development of the business but there are various drawbacks in the form of
challenges that often do not allow the smooth running of the changed services. The new changes
in the healthcare and the social sector have also brought about new challenges that hamper the
smooth running of the entire system.
Key issue
Firstly the change in the human resource base can bring about a vast change in the operational
framework of the health organizations. Here Human resource base refers to the employees of the
healthcare organization (Coulourides et al., 2016). For example in particular hospital if the
presence of the number of old employees decreases compared to that of new employees then the
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management will face a tough time in making the new employees get acquainted with the new
working environment. As in the case of the given Case study, the hospital authorities were
having a tough time finding staffs that were willing to work at low wages.
The adoption of technological advance medical methods or entering into a collaboration with big
multi-specialty hospitals requires a lot of financial resources. Often the hospital authorities fail to
generate funding for new technologies thereby leading to customer dissatisfaction. As for
example as per the given case study, the organizations were having a tough time in adopting the
new form of social care.
Apart from this the changing governmental policies also played an important role in curbing the
smooth running of the operational framework in hospitals. As in the case of the case study the
new legislation known as the Care Act 2014, tried to introduce new social reforms that provided
extra care and responsibilities for people above 60 years. But the Act dismissed all the past
reforms that were generally followed by the hospital authorities which gave major challenges to
the hospital authority in coming up with the new reforms introduced by the Act.
Part 2: Evaluating recent changes in health and social care (LO2)
2.1 Proposing strategy to measure the recent changes
The changes in various sectors of services can pose various challenges like- lack of proper
employee engagement, lack of financial resources. It is necessary for the hospital organization to
take up measures to remove such challenges for the smooth functioning of their system that
would help to provide quality health services. But to implement changes in the entire framework
is both times consuming and requires a lot of monetary resources (Castro et al., 2016). Therefore
to incorporate new changes in the operational framework it is essential that the hospital
authorities measure the changes and its associated challenges.
For measuring the changes it is essential to take up certain approaches like the quantitative
approach and the qualitative approach. The quantitative approach tries to measure the limits of
the changes while the qualitative approach tries to measure the impacts of the changes. For
example, as in the case of the given case study, it was seen that the hospital authorities were
facing a problem to work with employees after the new Care Act 2014, was passed. As opined
by Courtin and Knapp (2017), the hospital authorities didn't have a strong employee base they
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were having problems in keeping staffs with low wages. It is essential for the managers of the
hospitals to take measures to ensure proper employee engagement. For example, the
management should hold a meeting with all its employees and provide all information regarding
the current business scenario and the present problems the company is facing. Depending upon
this the management should take up the views of the employees in ways to incorporate the new
changes and come to negotiations with the employee base regard the wages. This would help the
management to provide satisfaction to the employee base that in turn would work efficiently
towards incorporating the New Act in the operational framework of the hospital (Dietz et al.,
2017).
2.2 Measuring the impact of recent changes on the set criteria
Measuring the impact of the recent changes is essential in order to analyze whether the hospital
authority is able to overcome the new challenges that were brought in due to the incorporation of
the new changes. Measuring the impacts of the recent changes will help the management of the
hospital authorities to analyze whether the strategies taken by them in order to incorporate new
changes are working properly and if it’s not working properly then it’s necessary for the
authorities to amend the measures. As in the case of the given case study, it was seen that the
hospital authorities faced a major challenge of lack of skilled labour force after legislation was
passed by the local government (Londoncouncils.gov.uk, 2019). The hospital authorities in order
to ensure employee engagement had taken initiatives to hold meetings with employees in order
to make them understand the entire new operational framework and also come into negotiations
with the wage matter. After the meeting, the management should try to take up the opinions of
the employees regarding the new strategy. The management authority then should try to monitor
the activities of the employees (Guanais, 2015). The performance of the employees will help the
management to track the progress of their new applied strategies. In order to analyze whether the
new strategy is able to provide desired outcomes with the hospital authority should try to take
feedback from the consumers or the patients regarding the changes in the care and medical aid
after the implementation of the new strategy. Based on the feedback of the consumers the
hospital authority should take up measures that would help to improve the care and medical aid
for the consumer and at the same time ensure employee satisfaction.
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2.3 Evaluating the overall impact of the recent changes
In order to maintain the recent changes in the operational framework of the hospital, it is
necessary for the hospital authorities to ensure that the strategies taken up by the hospital
authorities in order to maintain the changes are effective and have played an important role in
elevating the possible threats (Heiman and Artiga, 2015). As in the case of the case study, it is
necessary for the hospital authority to see that they have proper employee engagement in the new
strategies, a proper employee engagement helps to improve the productivity of the strategy. The
hospital authority, therefore, should provide necessary training to the employees to render special
care to patients above 60 years of age as per the new Care Act 2014 (Londoncouncils.gov.uk,
2019). The management authority should also take initiative to analyze the feedback of the
consumer regarding the care they are getting from the staff. And if it’s seen that the employees
are not being able to perform their duties well it is essential for the authority to take up new
strategies which would help to improve the efficiency of the employees thereby ensuring patients
satisfaction. Monitoring the activities of the employees and analyzing the feedback of the
consumers will help the hospital authorities to incorporate new changes in the operating system
very effectively.
2.4 Proposing ways as a response to recent changes
The changes in the healthcare system in recent years owing to technological advancement,
legislations play an important role in establishing a firm operational framework for the company.
But the changes in the operational framework also bring changes in the attitude of the staffs who
are responsible for providing healthcare services. Often it is seen that the changing healthcare
services bring in challenging issues like lack of skilled employees or lack of financial resources
(Ocloo and Matthews, 2016). Generally, the recent changes in the healthcare services require the
hospital authorities to provide more care and better medical aid to the consumers.
As in the case of the case study the new Care Act 2014, had made laws where the healthcare
organizations were bound to provide extra care and medical aid to patients above 60 years of
age. This required the staffs of the healthcare organization to provide special care to the patients
(Londoncouncils.gov.uk, 2019). On the other hand the hospital authorities’ complaints that the
staffs were not willing to work properly because of the low wages. Therefore it became desirable
for the healthcare organization to take up necessary actions to meet the demands of the
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workforce. In order to respond to the recent changes the hospital authority therefore firstly
should take initiatives to provide satisfaction to their employee base. The company, therefore,
should try to take up employee development programmes where the management of the hospital
authority will keep a check on the performance of the employees and depending upon their
performances the employees would be awarded benefits in the form of extra allowances (Osborn
et al., 2015). The company should also take up the comments off their consumers and then try to
make necessary arrangements for either change in the strategy of strengthening their employee
performance.
Part 3: Discussion on the principles of waste management (LO3)
3.1 Explaining the key principles of change management
With the changing trends, the services provided by various sectors are also changing. A change
in the recent healthcare services is really essential for providing the best medical aid to patients.
But adopting the changes is not an easy task rather it requires adopting ways to maintain chain
management (Rabbitt et al., 2015). The chain management procedure involves a set of
principles. According to the principles, the adoption of change has three basic principles. They
are:-
● Preparing for the changes - according to these principles the stakeholders of the
company should take up initiatives to respond to the changing trends. The very first step
to adopt the changing trend is to analyze the urgency of the situation to adopt the change.
The company or the organization should also try to analyze the future benefits of the
company by adopting the changes and then take up facilities that would help the company
to adopt the change
● Employee Participation: As employees are considered to be an important human
resource that helps to increase the productivity of the company. Therefore it is essential
for the health organization or the companies to take initiatives to train their employees for
the changing trends. In order to increase the satisfaction of employee’s base, the
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companies should try to hold meetings where the employee base will have the freedom to
share their visions for the future prospects of the new strategies (Sallnow et al., 2016).
● Final implementation of the resources: After analyzing the benefits and drawbacks the
hospital organization or the company should take up initiatives to device strategies that
would help to incorporate the new changes in the operational framework of the healthcare
organization. As opined by Slade (2017), the company should also monitor the changes
in the services after the implementation of the new trends and should also try to plan
ways to manage it in order to provide the best quality healthcare services to patients.
3.2 Explaining ways in which the changes in health and social care services are planned.
The changes in healthcare and other sectors have successfully been implemented in various
offices and organizations. The recent changes in healthcare have helped organizations to provide
the best medical services. As in the case of the case study the new Care Act of 2014, had passed
laws which provide satisfaction to the elderly population above the age of 60. But at the same
time, it is necessary for the healthcare organization to track or monitor the benefits or drawbacks
of the new changes. The ways in which a healthcare organization monitors the recent changes are
as follows:
● Action Plan: It is necessary for the hospital authority to device an action plan before the
implementation of the new changes in the operational framework. The management
should take initiatives to highlight the benefits that the new changing trend will bring.
The plan should outlay guidelines about the task or activities that are required to be
followed by the employees. The management who makes the plan should also try to set
goals that need to be achieved by the healthcare organization in order to make the
changes successful (Surr et al., 2016).
● Communication Plan: The communication plan mainly performs the activity of
delivering the entire guidelines of the change procedure to the employees and getting
their vision on the proposed changes. It also helps the company to take initiatives to make
a clear overview of the changes in the operational framework and the associated visions.
● Stakeholder Management Plan: This plan helps the healthcare organization to analyze
the impact of the changes on the stakeholder base of the company. The stakeholder
analysis will help the company to analyze the opinions of the stakeholders on the recent
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changes and take up strategies to ensure stakeholders satisfaction. This would help to
increase the productivity of the organization thereby providing the best healthcare
services to the patients.
Figure 2: Plans to manage the changes in services
(Source: Created by Author)
3.3 Proposing ways to monitor the recent changes in Health and social care
The changes that occur due to various factors like legislation, changing market scenario and so
on do not come without any challenges. Often challenges in the form of lack of employee
support, lack of financial resources are common. The healthcare organization takes many steps to
introduce new changes in the framework. But it is also essential to carry out monitoring of the
outcomes of the changing trend. The monitoring of the changes will help the company to analyze
its performance with the implementation of new changes in the organizational framework.
● Monitoring of Employee performance: Before the implementation of the new changes
it is essential for the company to provide a description of the entire change procedure to
the employees and also gather their views. The company should also provide necessary
training to the employees to provide the best services. After this, the company should try
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ActionPlan