Healthcare Organizational Culture.

Introduction

Healthcare organizational culture is the shared mental assumptions that guides how healthcare professionals interpret practice standards and behave. As a concept, healthcare organizational culture has three main features: culture of patient-centeredness; culture of safety; and culture of wellness. It is of relevance as a factor that influences the quality of medical services delivered. Still, it is important to note that healthcare providers have a significant impact on the notion of culture, especially within the hierarchical structures. In addition, culture is controlled and structured with a focus on supporting efficiency and stability. This implies that culture has implications for change within an organization through creating opportunities that either hinder or support the change (Davies &Mannion, 2018). The present paper discusses how culture is leveraged to bring about organizational change within the healthcare environment.Healthcare Organizational Culture.

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Current Healthcare Organizational Issue

Patients are the main concern of any healthcare organization, and their experiences are key to interpreting whether or not their needs are met in terms of delivering the expected services and improving care outcomes. In fact, there is a need to understand and address the concerns presented by patients and their families, while ensuring that their interactions with providers remain cohesive, streamlined, timely, convenient and easy. This is a real concern since about 40% of patients are unsatisfied with the medical services they receive (Al-Abri, 2017). The majority of satisfied patients identify personalized care as an important factor as it ensures that their personal needs are adequately met. Evidence-based practice (EBP) helps to address this need by presenting relevant current knowledge that acts as the basis for standardized care approaches. By definition, EBP entails identifying and transforming new knowledge into a clinically significant form that is then implemented to impact healthcare performance and outcomes (Al-Abri, 2017).Healthcare Organizational Culture.

Evidence-Based Approach for Proposed Change

Patient outcomes and experiences as linked to health care approaches and costs. These features have implications for patient satisfaction as indicators of care quality. In addition, they have an impact on medical error claims, patient retention and clinical outcomes. Also, they impact the delivery of quality, patient-centered, efficient and timely healthcare. This awareness makes it clear that a key strategy for improving patient satisfaction is providers exhibiting sincere and consistent behavior as part of the organization culture. This can be achieved through addressing each patient by name, maintaining eye contact as often as possible, educating patients, and having clean facilities (Gleeson et al., 2016). Besides that, improving patient satisfaction levels may require that patient experiences and care delivery be personalized. Additionally, patients should be allowed access to relevant non-clinical and supportive services as required to include EMR, prescription records, patient advocates, valet, clergy, housekeeping and food services. Still, these changes would face significant challenges from provider resistance to the change, and implementation cost concerns (Gleeson et al., 2016).Healthcare Organizational Culture.

Plan Implementation

Bringing about change requires intervention at both the organizational and individual levels. This is based achieved through a targeted approach with deliberate steps. The initial steps must focus on conducting research and collating current evidence that establishes the need for the change while highlighting the intentions to improve patient satisfaction. The next steps would focus on engaging an inter-professional team as they would present different professional perspectives that would help to improve the change success. Besides that, other stakeholders would also be engaged through collecting their opinions on the change and ensuring that they are informed about the need for the change and its implications for them, such as effects on workflow. The final steps would entail implementing the change and reporting its effects at the end of six months as milestones achieved. Additionally, the managers and heads of departments must be engaged to ensure that they support the change, ensure implementation, and report the effects (Billingsley, 2017).Healthcare Organizational Culture.

Measurable Outcomes

Performance measurement is targeted at identifying opportunities for making improvements to the change plan. It presents feedback on the change and compares the expected and actual outcomes to determine the value of the change. In addition, it quantifies the change and relates it to other targeted goals, such as healthcare processes and patient perceptions. As such, the outcomes used to evaluate the change must be realistic, measurable and specific with a focus on describing the change (Prakash, 2019).Healthcare Organizational Culture.

Critical Appraisal

Patient satisfaction remains an important indicator of health care quality at the organization level. It has implications for medical malpractice claims, patients’ retention, and clinical outcomes. In addition, it has an impact on delivery of timely and efficient patient-centered care of the right quality. Besides that, it is an indicator of healthcare organization and providers’ success. Patient satisfaction is measured based on the patient-reported experiences. It has implications for organizational change by linking EBP to the reality of the practice environment in terms of personalizing the EBP and directing providers to targeted the competencies they can address. Overall, it is important to note that change is a complex process that entails planning, implementing different operations, evaluation, and adopting different strategies to ensure that the targeted change is relevant and is leveraged for its value.Healthcare Organizational Culture.

Evaluation Table within the Critical Appraisal Tool Worksheet Template

Completing the Evaluation Table as presented in the Critical Appraisal Tool Worksheet Template in five personal determinations/conclusions. Firstly, there are a range of issues that affect change at the organizational levels. Secondly, there is a need for an inter-professional team to help in directing the change by presenting innovative ideas. Thirdly, EBP is applied with the primary objective of improving patient outcomes. Fourthly, there is a need to involve patients in care delivery as this helps to improve their satisfaction levels. Finally, there is a need to set measurable goals to evaluate the change being implemented.Healthcare Organizational Culture.

Healthcare organizational culture refers to a shared mental assumptions that help in guiding interpretation and behavior of the healthcare professionals.
The healthcare of the health care organization is based on three major aspects that are culture of wellness, culture of safety, and culture of patient-centeredness.
The organizational culture helps in influencing the effectiveness in offering quality healthcare services.
The healthcare providers are the most important players in influencing the overall healthcare organizational culture.
The organizational culture of the healthcare organizational is hierarchical.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
This means that the culture is structured and controlled and basically focuses on efficiency, stability, and doing things in the right manner.
This means that the organizational culture of the healthcare organization supports changes that aim at improving effectiveness in patient care and delivery of services.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
The culture comprises of several sub-cultures and these act as the driving force for organizational changes (Davies & Mannion, 2018).
Current Healthcare Organizational Issue
Patient experience remain one of the issues facing the service delivery and improving patient care in the organization.
It is crucial to understand, address, and assure that every patient interaction and patient outcomes remain easy, convenient, timely, streamlined, and cohesive.
This ensures that the healthcare services offered meet the expectations patients as well as their families.
According to a recent survey conducted by the healthcare to establish the levels of satisfaction among the patients, the findings indicate that 40 percent of the patients were not satisfied by the services offered at the facility (Al-Abri , 2017).
Most of those satisfied indicated that there was no personalized care at the facility that assured them that their personal needs were adequately addressed.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
This means that there is a need to change the approach adopted by the healthcare facility and focus on patient-centered care which will take into consideration the patient needs as well as the needs of their families.
Evidence-based approach helps the healthcare providers to use the current knowledge and connect it to standardized care processes and the patient outcomes.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
EBP is applied in bringing in new knowledge that is transformed into clinically significant form that is effectively implemented across the entire care team and measured in terms of meaningful impact on performance and health outcomes (Al-Abri , 2017).
Evidence-Based Approach for Proposed Change
Patient outcomes and experiences are basically associated with the improved outcomes and the costs of treatment.
Patient satisfaction acts as an indicator of establishing the quality of healthcare.
It impacts the clinical outcomes, retention of the patient, and medical errors claims.
It also affects the timely, efficient, as well as patient-centered delivery of quality healthcare.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
The best way to meet the patient satisfaction is through exhibiting sincere and consistent behavior.
This helps in encouraging high levels of service delivery and should be incorporated to the organizational culture.
The main tactics that are proposed to be applied include use of the name of the patient, making eye contact with the patient as often as possible, spend considerable time educating the patient, ensuring cleanliness at the facility, and improving the atmosphere at the facility (Gleeson, Calderon, Swami, Deighton, Wolpert, &Edbrooke-Childs, 2016).
Others include determination on whether improved patient satisfaction requires upgraded system and personalizing the patient experience.
Inpatient patient satisfaction should allow the patients to access to non-clinical services such as EMR, prescription fulfillment, patient advocate, patient advocate, clergy, personal care, valet, food service, and housekeeping services.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
The first risk is resistance for change by the healthcare staff which may make it hard to achieve the changes and their expected outcomes.
Another issue is the cost of implementation which means that there is going to be increase on the costs which might be reflected to the patients leading to increased costs of care (Gleeson, Calderon, Swami, Deighton, Wolpert, &Edbrooke-Childs, 2016).
Plan Implementation.
The main changes will be based at both organizational level as well as at individual level among the healthcare staff.
There is enough evidence that patient satisfaction leads to improved patient outcome.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
The initial stage of the plan includes conducting research to establish the best changes that are required in order to improve patient satisfaction.
An inter-professional team is best suited in order to have varied ideas from all departments of the healthcare organization.
Each member of the team is required to contribute his or her ideas to the team.
The findings of the team will be communicated to the entire team of the staff at organizational level through trainings and workshops attended by all employees.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
The adoption of the proposed changes will be done gradually and it is expected that they will be achieved within six months.
The head of departments will be responsible in ensuring that their departments implement the changes and they will be reporting to the manager the progress on weekly basis during the inter-departmental meetings (Billingsley, 2017).
Measurable Outcomes
Performance measurement aims at improving the quality of decisions made by all sectors of the healthcare system within an organization.
They aim at providing the feedback to the organization about the plan and compare the results with the expected outcomes.
The quality measures helps in quantifying the processes of healthcare, perceptions of the patients, outcomes, and organizational structures that helps in the provision of high-quality healthcare and relates to one or more health care quality goals.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
An excellent outcome statement must be specific, measurable, and realistic.
The outcomes are supposed to provide a description what will happen after the activity is completed (Prakash, 2019).
Critical Appraisal
Patient satisfaction remain crucial and is commonly applied as an indicator for establishing quality of health care at organizational level.
Patient satisfaction affects the clinical outcomes, retention of the patients, claims of medical malpractice claims.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
It impacts the efficiency, timely, and patient-centered delivery of high-quality patient care.
It remains an effective indicator that aims at measuring the success of the healthcare providers and the healthcare organization.
The patient-reported experience measures are basically collected, communicated, and applied in informing quality improvement across the healthcare organization.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
Organizational change need to be based on EBP and the healthcare professionals are required to offer expertise required to undertake their professional tasks and they are obligated to undertake to undertake only those tasks they are competent with.
Change is a complex process that involves evaluation, planning, implementation of various operations, tactics, and strategies in order to ensure the change is worth and remains relevant in the healthcare industry.
Evaluation Table within the Critical Appraisal Tool Worksheet Template
After completing the Evaluation Table within the Critical Appraisal Tool Worksheet Template, I have learnt many issues that affect changes at organizational level.Healthcare Organizational Culture.
I have learnt that there is a need to form an inter-professional team that will help in providing various ideas about the proposed changes.
I have also learnt that the main aim of applying EBP in healthcare practice is to help improve the patient outcomes.
I have also learnt on the need to involve patients in care as this acts as the key to patient satisfaction.
I have also learnt that there is a need to set measurable goals in order to evaluate the project at the end and measure the outcomes against the expected outcomes.
This remain important in improving the entire process through making necessary changes as they may arise in order to meet the expected outcomes.Healthcare Organizational Culture.