Strategic Planning and Performance in Healthcare: Middleville

This case study provides an analysis of Middleville Regional Health Care's strategic planning and performance. It discusses the role of the governing body in strategic planning, the importance of performance measurement, and strategies for maintaining a competitive market position. The case study also addresses the implementation of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and related health data systems, along with strategies for promoting employee satisfaction. The analysis highlights the need for Middleville to focus on patient-centered care, technology integration, and employee retention to improve its performance and competitive advantage in the healthcare industry. The paper concludes by emphasizing the importance of a well-designed strategic plan and continuous improvement efforts.

Running Head: HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT
Healthcare Management
Name
Institution

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Healthcare Management
Introduction
Many healthcare organizations, comprising, Middleville Regional Health Care, anticipate
their governing boards to be very active towards developing and formulating strategies. These
strategies play a leading role in boosting the competitive advantage of the organization in the
healthcare industry (York, 2010). Consequently, organizations have included their code of
conduct, corporate social responsibilities that the board of governance is expected to play. The
purpose of the assignment is to provide the human resource manager of the Middleville Regional
Health Care with strategies that will increase its performance in the healthcare industry by
answering the case study questions.
Role of the Governing Body in Strategic Planning
The healthcare sector in many instances confronted with numerous challenges, such as
insufficient resources, shifting societal needs and intense competition that demands effective
strategies. Thus, these problems demand a governance body, which is transparent, responsible,
knowledgeable, as well as motivated towards leading the organization in the formulation of
sound strategies to adequately handle the changing dynamics in the sector. The strategic planning
is an ongoing process for governing body of assessing the marketplace that the organization
operates and other elements that help the organization to restructure its strategic course.
Accordingly, an effective strategic plan will help the organization to identify plus address the
challenges, which are probable to affect the company from achieving its vision (York, 2010).

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The outcomes of the assessment will be utilized to provide a new strategic course for the
organization. As the management demand for companies to increase, the governing body is at the
present intensely entailed in formulating an ongoing strategic function, presently, governing
boards restrict their participation to authorization of proposals, as well as monitoring the progress
of the company’s strategic objectives. Most significantly, the board takes part in formula8itng
the strategic direction of the companies. Hence, the board at Middleville is hugely entailed in
strategy formulation that needs an appropriate understanding of the organization. Accordingly,
the governing board has hired a consulting firm to assess its strategic performance (Shekelle,
Goldzweig, Southern California Evidence-based Practice Center., Rand Corporation., Health
Foundation (Great Britain), & Quest for Quality and Improved Performance, 2009).
Therefore, the governance board at Middleville plays a leading function in the strategic
planning process. The board does not need to know everything regarding the organization, but
their main goal is to know strategic planning. The role of the governing board is designed to lead
a team that is involved in strategic planning. In addition, the governing board must in a good
position to resolve any form of miscommunication in the course of formulating strategies
whenever it surfaces. The board in the hospital should demonstrate effective and responsible
leadership role since they will seriously become accountable for the success or failure of the
strategic planning process. The governing board should also work in harmony with the
management team and employees of the organization to formulate a winning strategic plan
(Kabene, Pate, Leahy, Leos, Beil-Hildebrand, Wickramasinghe, Bidwell & Davis, 2011).
The healthcare sector is faced with a fast-changing environment. For this reason, the
practices, processes, and rules, which are applicable today, can be important in the prospect.

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Hence, the strategic planning process plus the governing board should be flexible and quick to
accept changes in the sector and must not adamant to embrace a new direction in addition to
philosophy. The failure to adapt to these changes will lead to a considerable loss for the
organization. The board should be in constant communication in which they will be informed of
new processes, ideas along with the strategies. Furthermore, the governing board may lead the
strategic planning process by developing a compelling and meaning vision and mission for the
organization (York, 2010).
Performance Measurement
The success of the governing board relies on its capability to choose the right
performance metrics, which it may easily monitor to determine the effectiveness of the
organization. The board should select manageable performance metrics that can add value to the
whole company. The standards performance metrics must entail financial matters, operations,
organizational matters, market position, and the nature of its relationship with stakeholders.
Quality performance measurement employs diverse data to assess the healthcare services, which
are offered against some established quality standards. The assessment must measure all the
elements entailed in the healthcare organization comprising facilities, practitioners, as well as the
services that are provided (Mayo, 2014). Thus, the performance measurement process permits
organizations to asses the quality of the services offered. The quality measurement may be
performed on four primary broad categories: process, outcome, structure and patient experience.
Process measure assesses the delivery of health services, while the outcome measure appraises
the result of the practitioner. On the other hand, structure measure assesses the capacity of the

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organization to offer services by assessing diverse organizational elements, such as the
employees, facilities and diverse facilities, which are used.
Middleville Regional Health Care must utilize the process, patient experience and
outcome measures in measuring their capacity to offer quality healthcare to the society. The
organization may provide documents to the clients/patients where they look to establish the
degree of satisfaction from the health services they receive from the facility. Positive patient
experience is a sign that the facility is offering high-quality services that demonstrate that
practitioners are committed to the delivery of health services. In the process measure, the facility
may assess the efficiency of a particular action in profiting the patient. This is relevant in
assessing the healthcare plans that are developed. Hence, if the particular action was no efficient,
then the organization should develop and adapt a better action. In regard to the outcome measure,
it may be used in Middleville t asses the patient state following the treatment plan offered and if
the patient condition gets better, then the services offered in the facility are of high quality, as
well as effective (Fottler, 2010).
Maintaining a Competitive Market
The table shows that Middleville has 575 beds, 13,000 admissions, 221,000 outpatient
visits, 350 census, and expenses that amount to $125,000 and 2,000 employees. When compared
to its rivals in the industry (Brierfield and Greystone), it is apparent that Middleville resides in
the highest point in the marketplace almost in all fields except in expenses and admissions. The
action plan for Middleville to boost the number of admissions to the facility is not only to lower
the prices, but as well to make the services patient-centered. The patient-centered approach will

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never be outmoded as it will fix the challenges of healthcare and will provide a competitive
advantage for Middleville. The patient-centered system will allow the organization to develop an
effective financial performance system and improve the quality of services offered.
Middleville must put in place IT system for use in admissions, dealing with records of
patients, as well as maintaining financial records. The organization must implement an electronic
medical records (EMRs) system to boost its performance and need to be accompanied by diverse
costs that must be addressed to guarantee that EMRs are effective. Incorporating technology in
healthcare services is linked to cost-efficiency, improvement of quality and safety of the patients.
The most unique advantage of using the EMR system is the reduction of the medical errors that
will improve the quality and safety in the facility (Mayo, 2014).
Nonetheless, several organizations in the healthcare sector have been hesitant in
embracing these technologies due to associated risks, which are entailed. The primary challenge
towards the implementation of technologies such as EMR is the interoperability along with
compatibility of the system. There are many costs associated with integrating technologies in the
healthcare organizations and these organizations should not integrate the technology into their
operation but should for a perfect substitute. Additionally, the organization should assess the
technology and ascertain if it increases patient spending in the long-term (Shekelle et al. 2009).
The costs and benefits associated with implementing EMR and associated health data
systems
Middleville must implement advanced technology systems as soon as possible to
compete favorable in the marketplace in the 21st-century. The company must be conversant with

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5the costs and benefits with the implementation of the EMRs and other health data systems prior
to the beginning of the project. One of the benefits of EMRs is that it allows enables physicians
to keep accurate data about a patient’s condition for accurate retrieval during the next visits. In
addition, Electronic Medical Records reduces the duplication of diagnostics tests which helps to
reduce expenses. Again, Middleville will be able to improve the quality of healthcare if it
implements an Electronic Medical Records and associated health data systems (Fottler, 2010).
Nevertheless, Middleville should ready for the high costs linked implementing Electronic
Medical Records and associated health data systems. Thus, the high costs involve equipment
costs as well as training costs. However, Middleville must understand that successful
implementation of an Electronic Medical Records and associated health data systems will result
into huge profits for the organization, which will take care of the costs incurred (Shekelle et al.,
2009).
The best plan for implementing an EMRs and related health data systems comprise;
analysis and redesign of work-flow, modification of the facility in order to create space, selection
and installation of hardware, configuration of software, development of a backup system, loading
old patients’ data, transferring patient information from paper to the EMRs system, and training
employees to use the newly implemented system. By following this implementation plan, health
care providers at Middleville will now begin to produce and process patients’ information
electronically as they carry on with health care delivery (Mayo, 2014).
Promoting Employee Satisfaction

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Retaining employees is more economical for the organization rather than hiring new
ones. Hiring new employees is costly and cost more than 20 percent of individual yearly pay.
The first approach is to point out the ground for employee turnover. In many instances,
employees leave the organization because of poor pay. If this is the case, the company can
consider increasing their pay with the cost that could have been used to hire new employees. The
economy has affected the available salaries for nurses at Middleville. Nonetheless, the company
can also identify the problem since it may be salaries and may be there are no sufficient
opportunities for the workers to develop their career. The HR can provide growth opportunities
though promotions to the employees in the company. This can be provided by training the
employees through workshops and conferences that will be organized by the HR department.
The department needs to invite experts to offer training to the employees. Identifying the
problem will be an important strategy towards boosting employee satisfaction and subsequently
retention (York, 2010).
Another approach that Middleville can use to boost the satisfaction of the employees is
using communication to establish credibility amongst the employees. The HR manager must be
ready to listen to the concerns of the employees and address them as needed. Because the
organization cannot make salary increases at the moment, it can promote the satisfaction of the
employees by making them feel valued, thus will retain more experienced workers (Collins,
Collins, McKinnies & Jensen, 2008).
Conclusion

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The governing board should play a leading function in developing a strategic plan that
will guide the management towards increasing efficiency in the organization. The performance
metrics should be designed in a manner that will promote the evaluation of the company and
effective development of the strategic plan. Middleville should continue developing better ways
of reducing costs, integrating technologies and promoting the satisfaction of employees.

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References
Collins, K., Collins, S., McKinnies, R., & Jensen, S. (2008). Employee Satisfaction and
Employee Retention. The Health Care Manager , 27(3), 245-251.
Fottler, M. D. (2010). Strategic human resource management in health care. Bingley: Emerald.
Kabene, S. M., Pate, C. L., Leahy, N. M., Leos, L., Beil-Hildebrand, M. B., Wickramasinghe, N.,
Bidwell, P., ... Davis, E. (2011). Human resources in healthcare, health informatics and
healthcare systems. Hershey, PA: Medical Information Science.
Mayo, F. B. (2014). Planning an applied research project in hospitality, tourism, and sports.
Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Shekelle, P. G., Goldzweig, C. L., Southern California Evidence-based Practice Center., Rand
Corporation., Health Foundation (Great Britain), & Quest for Quality and Improved
Performance. (2009). Costs and benefits of health information technology: An updated
systematic review. London: The Health Foundation.
York, K. M. (2010). Applied human resource management: Strategic issues and experiential
exercises. Los Angeles: Sage.