Change Management Report: Steward Health Care System Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of change management within the Steward Health Care System. It begins with an introduction outlining the report's objective and the case study company. The main body delves into various aspects of change management, including the types of change (digital transformation), environmental complexity and turbulence, internal and external drivers, applied change models and strategies, organizational structure and culture, methods of internal communication, management and leadership styles, and stakeholders involved. The report examines the competitive landscape of the healthcare industry, the role of leadership in driving change, and the application of the "Shared Services Model." It highlights the importance of technology, innovation, and collaboration in achieving successful change management. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and implications of the analysis. The student has analyzed the case study to identify the drivers, models and strategies in the change management process.

Running head: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Change Management
[Steward Health Care System]
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Main Body...................................................................................................................................................2
1-Types of Change: "Digital Transformation Journey"...........................................................................2
2-Environmental Complexity and Turbulence.........................................................................................3
3-Main external and internal drivers........................................................................................................3
4-Change models and strategies applied..................................................................................................5
5-Organization structure..........................................................................................................................5
6-Organisation Culture............................................................................................................................6
7-Methods of internal communication.....................................................................................................7
8-Management and Leadership styles......................................................................................................8
9-Stakeholders Involved..........................................................................................................................8
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................9
References.................................................................................................................................................10

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Q1. Focusing on your workplace (or one where you know internal processes, culture and management
style), analyze how change is managed. To do this analysis you will need to focus and include in your
analysis aspects such as:
Introduction
This report aims to show how a change can be managed. The aim will be fulfilled in the context
of the "Steward Health Care System”, which is the chosen case study company for this report. The reason
for selecting a company is that it will help to explore many complexities being faced during the change
process. Besides, the role of stakeholders, the external and internal drivers for the change, etc. can also be
understood easily. Steward Health Care System is a nationally recognized chain of health care services.
This health care brand enjoys a fully integrated health care system, which offers services across 10
different states of the United States and 1 country in Europe (Beckershospitalreview.com 2020).
Main Body
1-Types of Change: "Digital Transformation Journey"
Steward Health Care System is going through changes for the last two years. The long-term
vision of the ongoing change is to avail of a robust supply chain network by actively identifying and
collaborating with the leading industry business units. The objective of the change is to offer patients
world-class treatment at its different health care units and be able to meet the rising demand for a good
care at the most justified pricing.
Steward Health Care System is a reputed, tax-paying and physician-led healthcare network
majorly based in the United States. The portfolio of this healthcare brand is very extensive as it has 38
hospitals in the United States and Malta. The healthcare brand gives priorities to its patients, which is
evidenced in its commitment to deliver the first-class care to its patients (Supplychaindigital.com 2020).
This healthcare unit is constantly doing something new on part of its business model to make it
much more flexible with the changing healthcare system as well as patients’ demand for a good service.

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The essence of its brilliance lies in its business model, which is pretty innovative. The change that they
are bringing to the company is accessing new technologies by collaborating with the strategic industry
business partners.
Steward Health Care is undergoing a digital transformation. They currently operate two ERPs and
thus lack the efficiency to be achieved from operating one single ERP. Steward Health Care will soon get
one enterprise resource planning solution for all communication and information-oriented problems
(Supplychaindigital.com 2020).
2-Environmental Complexity and Turbulence
Health system leaders are under enormous challenges from the changes that are happening at a
rapid pace. The leaders are at the maximum challenge to prove their worth in companies and guide these
to success. Reimbursement will not happen easily as ebbs and flows are debatable from the perspective of
the health policy. The market is getting increasingly competitive and consolidated as well as overtimes.
Technology can provide tremendous opportunities to excel into. However, the technology comes with
significant risks and costs. In this mixing of opportunities and technologies, appropriate decisions must be
made to take advantage of the opportunities. Emotions let hardened professionals become the resistor to
change. In such circumstances, health leaders should recognize a fact that answers to this trend are not
simple. The leaders will have both the choices and consequences. Consequences may or may not be
welcomed by all. Rather, it can be despised by many. Health care leaders must show resilience to this
rising complexity. Notably, success means grabbing on opportunities, assessing the outcomes, welcoming
people on board, motivating them to perform and let the results happen (Karim, Carroll and Long 2016).
Leaders, those who are more adept prefer to foster collaboration to use the changes to good effect.
Such leaders will help their organizations become more productive as they are positive towards
increasingly happening industry-wide changes. Steward Health Care System is blessed to have such
leaders who regularly think of boarding new members provided if they can add value to its change
objective. The leaders of the company do not just speak about the importance of having an agile
workforce but also ensure the workforce receives appropriate support from the business. It is how the
leaders have been able to gain the confidence of its people upon whom they depend the most.
3-Main external and internal drivers

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External:
There are many external drivers of change for the Steward Health Care System. First, the
healthcare industry is fiercely competitive. There is good governmental support in this industry. The US
government, for example, promotes and supports a competitive landscape as it believes that the
competition will bring services at a lower cost, produce highly appropriate care and deliver improved
patient outcomes. The government, therefore, gives the effort to create and maintain a robust health care
setting. In the course of making this industry much more vibrant and competitive as well, the “Affordable
Care Act” was put to the action in 2010. The Act encouraged and helped a few new entrants to enter the
market; however, few other states of the country are still to become the competitive markets. Around 19
states receive supports from only the small insurers (Statnews.com 2020).
People tend to visit their nearest and local care centers for these are easily accessible and
affordable also. However, the development of more such care centers is on a declining spree for many
reasons. Such care centers lack a good service facility, which is needed to handle critical cases. Treatment
in such centers can be harassing especially for critical cases, which may be sent to better hospital units.
The family members of the patients will feel being harassed for being relocated to a new treatment unit.
Local care centers do not follow universal legislative guidelines for treatment and other else. Hence, there
would be high chances of high operating costs and less responsibility for negative cases. Treatment at
locally situated medium grade hospitals can be dangerous because these hospitals lack the world-class
infrastructure needed to ensure excellent patient care (Eckelman and Sherman 2016).
The use of technology and great physical infrastructure can change many things. High-end
equipment is hard to afford. Only high-end hospitals having the right infrastructure, and appropriate
support of the Government and Insurers can afford to have expensive equipment. Technology and
infrastructure can be used to outperform the others provide if the center has the best quality physicians
(Orszag 2016).
Internal:
The leadership in Michael Prokopis has been the real driver of change at Steward Health Care.
Michael Prokopis is its Vice President of the Supply Chain. The person believes in developing an agile
network of experts to offer world-class care to patients. The leader believes in using the latest technology
and showing great use of innovation to stay ahead of its competitors in terms of facility infrastructure and
patient care. It is due to such a sense of doing work they have separate units for taking care of different

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business activities. For example, they have a procurement team to procure the best technology and
equipment. Steward Health uses ‘Value Analysis Wrapper’ to judge the productivity of each new
equipment and service deployed along with its supply chain network (Steward.org 2020). The leader does
a very aggressive business as evident in how the business welcomes potential business units to become a
part of it. It does so to use the latest technology and avail more solutions on how to predict the service
demand.
4-Change models and strategies applied
The change model which this healthcare brand follows is the "Shared Services Model". The
model advocates for looking to new and strategic partners to avail of new technology and obtain more
solutions on how to predict the patients' footfall and avoid piling of backorders. In other sense, Steward
Health Care System is giving its best at advancing its technological capabilities by uniting with the
creative industry partners. This healthcare business is always open to collaborating with those who have
new ideas to share and help develop an agile supply chain network (Supplychaindigital.com 2020).
Moreover, it offers Horizontal and Vertical integrated care to patients. It is collaborated with different
healthcare units like Home Health, Medical Group (SMG), etc. across its supply chain network. The
purpose of such collaboration is to serve its patients from multi-dimensional perspectives such as
providing them urgent care or treating chronic diseases.
The business has separate departments each for its contracting process and the data analysis
work. These departments are particularly dedicated to the contracting terms and analyzing the data. These
departments are being formed to understand the value metrics more accurately, so that, the value
delivery could be monitored and modified based on the findings of the analysis (Supplychaindigital.com
2020). Steward Health Care System has a dedicated “Procurement Group" to deal with purchase orders.
They receive and capture the requisitions for new services and equipment, and place the deal into
purchase orders. The business brand also has a "Value Analysis Wrapper" to evaluate each product being
purchased and deployed into the supply chain. The evaluation is done from a clinical perspective like how
the product performs at the expectations and demands of clinicians (Supplychaindigital.com 2020).
5-Organization structure

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Fig 1: Corporate Organisational Structure
(Source: Mass.gov, 2020)
The above is a figure of the Corporate Organisation Structure of Steward Health Care. It shows
the various divisions and sub-divisions for diverse care units, which Steward Health Care has under its
portfolio.
6-Organisation Culture
The essence of excellent patient care at Steward Health Care has been its ability to use technology
and innovation, and develop robust coordination between different members in the business. The culture
at this care point prioritizes the use of agility, continuous improvement and resourcefulness. It is

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recognized as one of the world's most accountable care organizations. They have the mission to lead
health care into the future (Steward.org 2020). They as a unit remain focused on industry trends and
believe in responding to emerging changes. The utilization of opportunity is not just done with the age-
long existing system and tool but the modernized resources. The modernized resources they receive from
their various new and strategic business partners. Steward Health Care believes to work with those that
have something new to add more values to the health care system. By collaborating both vertically and
horizontally with strategic partners, Steward Health Care is reaching to a new solution on various
problems. They at present are focused on devising a strategy to reduce the backorders and predict the
service demand more efficiently.
Steward Health Care beautifully utilizes its various sub-cultures, which are its employees in
diverse forms. They promote diversity in the workplace by practicing transactional leadership. Employees
are encouraged to be compliant with the laws and policies of employability. Any violation of these
policies and laws will receive appropriate punishment. The best compliance is rewarded also. Hence, the
selection process is strictly against any biases. The HR personnel at Steward Health Care know exactly
what it takes to become a leading hospital unit in the United States and a few other parts of the world. It
is, therefore, they are very active at establishing coordination with the branch heads, middle managers,
top managers and the staff (Cleeren et al. 2016). All these have helped the Steward Health Care system
become a customer-centric company. The leaders continually strive to evaluate the performance of the
business to produce more values to their patients and become increasingly sustainable.
7-Methods of internal communication
Internal communication is facilitated in several ways. The leaders take the initiative to make the
supply chain more agile. They use the latest technology, collaborate with new partners and implement a
system regularly. The intention is to become a highly customer-oriented company. There is a data analyst
team, which works at the backend to understand the behaviors of customer data. Their understanding of
the data is used to predict more efficiently about the business demand. Besides, they are also using it to
grow their capabilities in reducing the burden of backorders. There is a procurement team, which takes
care of procuring new equipment and service. Emails and meetings are conducted to communicate the
procurement team the new targets to achieve. They are provided with appropriate guidance on the tool
and equipment to purchase. Steward Health Care seems to have identified a solution in ERPs to reduce
the burden of backorders. They are going through digital transformation for the last two years. ERPs will
integrate many activities in one place and thus, information can be accessed in real-time. There should not

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be any more burden of clearing the pending works as concerned teams will be prompted of the actions to
be taken. Hence, there would not be unnecessary delays in clearing the due works
(Supplychaindigital.com 2020).
8-Management and Leadership styles
The management at the Steward Health Care center follows certain terminologies to manage
different activities. CARE (Co-Morbidity Assessment Rules Engine) is one such terminology that has
codes as well as a set of cross-functional rules. With this terminology, they direct activities that aim to
provide safety and quality care to patients. Length of Stay (LOS) gives information on the intensive range
of tools available in the hospital and communicating the length of stay for each patient. Predictive Labor
Management (PLM) regularly updates on the tools and guidelines on how to manage the workforce in
real-time. Supply chain management is divided between three levels such as ‘The Easy’, ‘The Difficult’
and ‘The Hard’ (Beckershospitalreview.com 2020). This labeling is just to prioritize between different
activities.
The leaders at the Steward Health Care system follow the transactional leadership style. Even a
minute of achievement is rewarded. On the other hand, a minor violation of any compliance is
appropriately punished. The managers are very aggressive in taking bold decisions. They know how to
get their team involved in challenging projects. Leaders know that motivation is the key to drive people to
change.
9-Stakeholders Involved
The change in the process will affect the IT team at the Steward Health Care hospital. They will
have to find a solution to problems that may emerge once one enterprise resource planning goes live.
The procurement team, the supply chain leaders, the staff and the top managers will experience
new things as long the implementation process continues. Employees may have queries on how to feed
input in the system.
The managers can guide their people through the ERP provided if they are also trained on the
tool. The managers should also go for training to learn more about ERP.

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The procurement team can make real-time updates on the ERP system. However, they may also
have queries, which the managers or supply chain leaders will have to solve (Supplychaindigital.com
2020).
Conclusion
On a concluding note, it can be said that the digital transformation journey would not be an easy
ride for the Steward Health Care hospital. Their people will have many troubles initially in understanding
the system. It is recommended that there is a need to devise clear operating principles, so that, operating
becomes manageable. The leaders need to show a high tolerance for minor mistakes to keep their people
motivated towards this project. They should invest in training to broaden their people's minds towards
technology.

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References
Beckershospitalreview.com 2020. [online] Beckershospitalreview.com. Available at:
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pdfs/April13/A_840am_POLANOWICZ_Value
%20Creation.pdf [Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
Cleeren, K., Lamey, L., Meyer, J.H. and De Ruyter, K., 2016. How business cycles affect the healthcare
sector: A cross‐country investigation. Health economics, 25(7), pp.787-800.
Eckelman, M.J. and Sherman, J., 2016. Environmental impacts of the US health care system and effects
on public health. PloS one, 11(6), p.e0157014.
Karim, S., Carroll, T.N. and Long, C.P., 2016. Delaying change: Examining how industry and managerial
turbulence impact structural realignment. Academy of Management Journal, 59(3), pp.791-817.
Mass.gov 2020. [online] Mass.gov. Available at:
https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2018/03/21/steward-health-care-system-llc-org-chart.pdf
[Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
Orszag, P.R., 2016. US health care reform: cost containment and improvement in quality. Jama, 316(5),
pp.493-495.
Statnews.com 2020. Boosting competition among hospitals, health systems will improve health care.
[online] STAT. Available at: https://www.statnews.com/2017/09/20/hospitals-competition-health-care/
[Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
Steward.org 2020. Welcome | Steward Health Care. [online] Steward.org. Available at:
https://www.steward.org/ [Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
Supplychaindigital.com 2020. An inside look at Steward Health Care’s digital transformation journey.
[online] Supplychaindigital.com. Available at: https://www.supplychaindigital.com/company/inside-look-
steward-health-cares-digital-transformation-journey# [Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].