Change Management In The Healthcare Facility – Sample

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Table of Contents

Change Initiatives.

Implementing change initiatives for remote monitoring system in hospitals and lacking elements.

Key Insights. 

Risk Improvement Plan. 

Risk Management plan. 

Conclusion.

Change Initiatives

Implementing change initiatives for remote monitoring system in hospitals and lacking elements

The lacking elements in the change plan might have occurred due to the lack of knowledge or timely access to the available information and therefore there is greater need of implementing the change model such as Kotter’s 8 Step process of Change Management for managing the changes within information system (Gil-Lebrero et.al. 2017). As per the model the first element is about urgency of change and therefore it is crucial for all the employees of the hospital to embrace the change as a need of pandemic and to become the part of the process. It has been identified that errors have occurred because of lack of adequate information about the virtual systems in health care and therefore this is considered as one of the major lacking elements of the plan. Secondly, the involvement of Leaders is crucial for enhancing the commitment and overall enthusiasm such that quality standards of the hospital can be improved. However, there was less involvement of Leaders that lead to demotivation of employees to accept the change in an effective manner (Gallant, 2015).

The change initiative as per the model is then followed by development of strategies and vision aligned with the mission of the hospital through the incorporation of technology. The strategies would support educating the employees such that communication system can be improved along with the adoption of appropriate evaluation methods.  The fourth element of the change model is related to communication about the implementation of remote monitoring system for diagnosing and treating the patients and the team leader therefore plays an important role in enhancing the awareness of features and characteristics of the system however the element does not seem to be satisfied and increases number of risk factors to the change initiatives (Evangelista et.al. 2015). Team leaders must be highly responsible in making members aware about the importance of accessibility to the documents, organizational benefits, and their respective roles for developing a more effective system. Followed by communication, it is crucial for the employees of the organization to embrace the changes through empowering their action that will further aid in minimising barriers to the change. The engagement of employees would definitely help in removing the barriers along with the continual assessment of barriers which is surely lacking in this case. If barriers are not accessed in timely fashion, then it would result into a great loss of both time and money. Therefor the third lacking element identified is related to timely assessment of barriers (Valero et.al. 2016).

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The sixth step highlights the importance of development of short wins and this can be done by providing rewards and other benefits for their contribution in incorporating the new system. In addition to this, it is important to focus on more changes by combining all the gaining factors. At this stage of change model, it is important to practically implement the virtual system and to identify that all the elements are in favour of the mission of the hospital and if not, there is urgent need of restructuring (Carman et.al. 2019). It is therefore crucial to set the attainable objectives that helps in identifying the areas of improvement. The last step is related to consolidation of changes that would support the staff members to know about the concept of the new system.

The hospitals are currently experiencing pandemic challenges and complex work environment which has posed pressure for change to both the Healthcare professionals and the operations leadership (Galli, 2018). The implementation of virtual health care system has helped to overcome the issues. The change initiative and relevant implementation has identified number of elements that are essentially to be managed during change or were identified lacking such as less involvement of Leaders, inappropriate communication through team leaders and assessment of barriers in a continual manner. Less involvement of Leaders would lead to resistance to change among employees and for this it is important for managers or department heads to dwell on advantages rather than focusing on advantages. Another lacking element identified was related to inappropriate communication strategies (Kotter, 2017). Inappropriate communication would lead the employees towards demotivation and again resistance to the change. For an instance, team leaders must be aware about spread of rumours related to change and therefore each information must be circulated through mails and notices. The last element related to assessment of barriers in timely manner is crucial for avoiding future risks and losses to the change and therefore it is important for the leaders to be highly skilled and knowledgeable. It is important for them to focus on various dimensions related to culture innovation such as resources, goals, rewards, etc (Bhatt, 2017).

Key Insights

For ensuring the overall effectiveness of the changes implemented within the organisation it is important to assess the overall outcome to identify the level of success. From the overall outcome there has been identified number of ways to overcome the disadvantages as well as challenges for improving the level of efficiency. One of such methods is known as benchmarking that will compare the virtual system of one hospital with other hospital that is using the same system. Differences and comparisons can be evaluated between the organisation that would help to indicate the disadvantages which can be considered as a source of improvement. In addition to this, leaders must adopt critical thinking to resolve the critical issues related to systems transformation (Tang, 2019).

In addition to this, it is also crucial to manage the goals related to change as well as to prevent those probabilities that deviate from the set vision. Therefore, frequent communication, engagement of employees and reward management are some of the strategies or approaches that must be changes in future for the appropriate implementation of change initiatives. Furthermore, training of team members is crucial for handling the conflicts and is highly important for attainment of goals and improving the workforce synergies (Galli and Kaviani, 2018).

It has been identified that successful models that promotes the success of change initiatives can be used as platform for implementing within the organization. Therefore, the lacking factors have not only affected the functioning and success of the existing change but will also affect the changes that are to be implemented in future. For an instance, the application of communication strategies will support minimising the resistance to change and therefore this can be used in implementing the changes in other systems of the hospital with higher probability of success (Baines et.al. 2015).

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Risk Improvement Plan

The change initiative for the Hospital was related to implementation of virtual healthcare system specifically remote monitoring system. The implementation of the change management process helped the hospital serving the patients while meeting the criticalities of the pandemic situation, however there has been identified some elements related to this change initiative that were highly lacking such as involvement of head departments, communication through team leaders and management authorities as well as continual assessment of barriers (Leahy et.al. 2017). These elements cause high risk factor for the change and therefore risk improvement plan would be helpful for the elements described below:

Involvement of leaders in the change initiatives play crucial role. Leaders form strong relationship with other staff such as doctors, and nurses of the hospital and therefore it is important for heads to be responsive in influencing the employees to accept the changes for their easiness and future betterments. In addition to this, it has been identified that employees of the business organization often want to hear about changes messages on how their future work will be impacted from the person they are responsible to and in such scenarios lack of coordination and negligence behaviour by head of the departments not only demotivate employees but at the same time the expected outcome of the change also turns out be negative. For implementing change initiative in any organization, it is highly crucial for leaders to think in a critical manner as well as scan the environment for betterment of health systems (Jackson et.al.2015).

Another lacking factor identified during implementation of change initiative was related to dissatisfied communication by the team leaders. Communication is the key factor towards escalating the process of change management in any of the organization. Hospital is one of those places where there are no rooms for negligence as it will directly or indirectly influence the health of patients. Lack of communication not only influenced the process of change management rather it had influenced other factors such as risks, goals, learning and development processes as well as the roles of stakeholders (Russ et.al. 2015).

Implementation of changes within a process is a lengthy complex process and therefore along with the involvement of managers and communication, it is highly important to assess the barriers in a continual manner so as to improve the efficiency of the outcomes of the changes. The Hospital now days are multi-speciality and the changes related to IT infrastructure will affect in either positive or negative manner to all the departments. There are number of challenges that restrict the appropriate implementation of changes and amongst all the assessment of barriers is crucial for developing the strategies and interventions at the mid of the process such that the barrier does not influence the outcome of the process. For an instance, Virtual health care system needs accessibility and knowledge about social media and that was a big issue for most of the staff members. This calls for need of training that incurs cost and time and therefore it is important to assess such barriers on time and identify the best way possible out to mitigate it (Alert, 2015).

Risk Management plan

Risk Description Consequences Probability Impact Risk Level Risk Mitigation Strategy
Less involvement of Leaders Less or inappropriate involvement of department heads of the hospital might resist the employees to accept the change and also the IT professionals who are working for implementing the system might not get accessibility to the desired data. Demotivation among employees and expected outcome of the change also turns out be negative Less High High

Leaders are expected to encourage and support innovation.

Leaders must motivate employees to learn various aspects of social media before the actual utilization of virtual health care system such that they can assist health care professional and can gain other advantages

Dissatisfied communication strategies Team leaders are highly responsible for communicating the employees of the hospital about the what is going to change, why it is changing, and how it is going to affect them in future. It has been identified that employees of the Hospital exhibited resistance towards the change because of inappropriate communication process. They did not clearly define the changes as well as vision for the future which is highly important for motivating the employee to work as per the ongoing changes within the organization. High High High Engagement with employees, training and development sessions, conference for informing them about the benefits of virtual health care in hospitals would motivate them to accept the change. This must be adopted by team leaders and undertake actions on regular basis.
Assessment of barriers in non-continual manner Assessment of barriers is important for development of the strategies at the mid of the project such that the it does not influence the outcome of the process Increases the risk in terms of cost, time and outcomes High High High Assessment of barriers through benchmarking methods as well as utilization of skills and knowledge of leaders to identify the loopholes. Leaders must focus over dimensions related to culture innovation.  This must be done at completion of each phase of the project

Conclusion

The above report has successfully highlighted the change management initiatives with the help of Kotter’s 8 Step process of Change Management in the healthcare facility. The change is related to implantation of remote monitoring system, however while implementation there has been identified certain lacking elements that needs improvement for increasing the overall efficiency of the system. Identified elements were related to less involvement of leaders, inappropriate communication strategies as well as assessment of barriers in non-continual manner. There has been identified other issues related to these elements which are essentially to be rectified for improving the change management process in health care facilities related to improvement facilities for future growth and developments of patients and other stakeholders. Methods like benchmarking and strategies related to engagement and motivation of employees has been discussed to overcome the lacking elements in the system (Hopkin, 2015).

In addition to this, risk improvement plan is being implemented to identify the performance gap of the system. This has been effective in evaluating the overall success of the project. The plan has been effectively implemented while defining the mitigation strategies such that efficiency level of the system can be improved. Moreover, the application of other models during this change management process can also be implemented in future for further betterment of the system (Von et.al. 2016).

References

Books & Journals

Alert, S.E., 2015. Preventing falls and fall-related injuries in health care facilities. The Joint Commission55, pp.1-55.

Baines, R., Langelaan, M., de Bruijne, M., Spreeuwenberg, P. and Wagner, C., 2015. How effective are patient safety initiatives? A retrospective patient record review study of changes to patient safety over time. BMJ quality & safety24(9), pp.561-571.

Bhatt, R., 2017. Theoretical perspective of change management. CLEAR International Journal of Research in Commerce & Management8(2).

Carman, A.L., Vanderpool, R.C., Stradtman, L.R. and Edmiston, E.A., 2019. Peer Reviewed: A Change-Management Approach to Closing Care Gaps in a Federally Qualified Health Center: A Rural Kentucky Case Study. Preventing chronic disease16.

Evangelista, L.S., Lee, J.A., Moore, A.A., Motie, M., Ghasemzadeh, H., Sarrafzadeh, M. and Mangione, C.M., 2015. Examining the effects of remote monitoring systems on activation, self-care, and quality of life in older patients with chronic heart failure. The Journal of cardiovascular nursing30(1), p.51.

Gallant, A.L., 2015. The challenges of remote monitoring of wetlands.

Galli, B.J. and Kaviani, M.A., 2018. The impacts of risk on deploying and sustaining Lean Six Sigma initiatives. International Journal of Risk and Contingency Management (IJRCM)7(1), pp.46-70.

Galli, B.J., 2018. Change management models: A comparative analysis and concerns. IEEE Engineering Management Review46(3), pp.124-132.

Gil-Lebrero, S., Quiles-Latorre, F.J., Ortiz-López, M., Sánchez-Ruiz, V., Gámiz-López, V. and Luna-Rodríguez, J.J., 2017. Honey bee colonies remote monitoring system. Sensors17(1), p.55.

Hopkin, P., 2018. Fundamentals of risk management: understanding, evaluating and implementing effective risk management. Kogan Page Publishers.

Jackson, C., Shahsahebi, M., Wedlake, T. and DuBard, C.A., 2015. Timeliness of outpatient follow-up: an evidence-based approach for planning after hospital discharge. The Annals of Family Medicine13(2), pp.115-122.

Kotter, J.P., 2017. What leaders really do. In Leadership Perspectives (pp. 7-15). Routledge.

Leahy, M.F., Hofmann, A., Towler, S., Trentino, K.M., Burrows, S.A., Swain, S.G., Hamdorf, J., Gallagher, T., Koay, A., Geelhoed, G.C. and Farmer, S.L., 2017. Improved outcomes and reduced costs associated with a health‐system–wide patient blood management program: a retrospective observational study in four major adult tertiary‐care hospitals. Transfusion57(6), pp.1347-1358.

Russ, S.J., Sevdalis, N., Moorthy, K., Mayer, E.K., Rout, S., Caris, J., Mansell, J., Davies, R., Vincent, C. and Darzi, A., 2015. A qualitative evaluation of the barriers and facilitators toward implementation of the WHO surgical safety checklist across hospitals in England: lessons from the “Surgical Checklist Implementation Project”. Annals of surgery261(1), pp.81-91.

Tang, K.N., 2019. Change management. In Leadership and Change Management (pp. 47-55). Springer, Singapore.

Valero, S., Morin, D., Inglada, J., Sepulcre, G., Arias, M., Hagolle, O., Dedieu, G., Bontemps, S., Defourny, P. and Koetz, B., 2016. Production of a dynamic cropland mask by processing remote sensing image series at high temporal and spatial resolutions. Remote Sensing8(1), p.55.

Von Korff, M., Dublin, S., Walker, R.L., Parchman, M., Shortreed, S.M., Hansen, R.N. and Saunders, K., 2016. The impact of opioid risk reduction initiatives on high-dose opioid prescribing for patients on chronic opioid therapy. The Journal of Pain17(1), pp.101-110.