Hardwiring a Culture of Quality Care

Tiara Nicholas

Champlain College

17th November, 2018

Introduction

Leadership often entails spearheading changes and overseeing processes that often lead to quality goods and services, often steering growth in any organization. It involves coming up with strategies that will help to improve how things are done and often make the final consumer of the goods and services being provided happy (Ahrq.gov, 2018). As the head of the organization, I consider providing quality medical services a priority. To ensure that this happens, my organization will have to embrace a culture that puts quality on the front. As the CEO, I will use my leadership skills to hardwire this culture and ensure it becomes part of what we do on a daily basis.

Hardwiring a Culture of Quality Care

I will ensure that the organization aligns from top to bottom which implies that as the CEO, together with other managers and leaders and the top, we shall make plans and decisions, then follow up by communicating these decisions to the employees at the bottom. We shall then follow up to confirm if what we communicated has been done according to the plan. When employees at the bottom make plans to achieve an objective in a certain way, they must first seek approval from the leadership at the top. This kind of arrangement ensures that the CEO and top managers always give a nod to everything that has to be done. In addition, the framework reduces chances of mistakes happening because everything will have to be discussed first at the top before being implemented.

As the CEO, I will ensure that there is clear communication and explanations on why things must be done in a certain way. When decisions are made at the top, I will make it a culture to communicate these decisions to employees charged with the responsibility of implementing these decisions. The importance of explaining “WHY” is to make those implementing to own the process that they are undertaking and to understand the objectives. Employees need to understand that the plans are not dictated upon them by the administrators but decided upon so as to improve on quality in the organization.

As the CEO, I will spearhead rigorous and continuous training of leaders to ensure that they remain upbeat and up to date with emerging trends and technologies in the market. I will also ensure that the top leadership passes on this training to staff. Conducting trainings at least once per month will prove instrumental in passing of crucial skills required in ensuring that quality remains a top priority. All staff have some weaknesses in their areas of expertise. Training will enable employees to sharpen their skills in all their areas of weakness so that they can then translate the newly acquired skills to ensuring top quality services in the organization.

I will inculcate a culture of people practicing specific behaviors previously proven to get results. As the CEO and through experience, I know certain tested and tried methods that have over the years been known to achieve quality results in provision of quality healthcare services. Through my interaction with other CEOs and top managers in the health care industry, I am still learning new methods and tactics that can be employed to achieve great results. I will ensure that it becomes a culture to practice specific behaviors to achieve enormous results in the organization.

In order to hardwire a culture where quality care is top priority, I will hold people accountable for their performance. Accountability is the assurance that consistent evaluations will be done on the performance or behavior of employees on the roles that they play in the organization (Gunderman, 2009). I will conduct consistent performance reviews in the organization to know the best performing employees and also know those with various weaknesses. Accountability reduces the time that people spend on distracting and unproductive behavior. It will enable staff to concentrate on efforts that ensure provision top health care. Accountability also promotes ownership in organizations. Making people accountable in organizations teaches them to place value on their work at all times. If also done properly, accountability will inspire confidence because it helps to improve on employee’s concentration and skills.

I will also promote the idea of standardization of processes in the organization. Standardization means describing how people in an organization should complete a task or sequence of tasks (Gunderman, 2009). Once the process of doing something has been established, all employees should then follow this path in ensuring delivery of quality health care services. Standardization in the reorganization I lead will help to improve clarity. This is because cases of guess work will be completely eliminated by having a clear way of how things are supposed to be done. It will also improve quality and promote productivity because it reduces time wasted by staff combing around seeking answers to how a task is supposed to be done. It also boosts employee morale when employees perfect the art of performing a certain task.

Consistent innovation in the organization will be part of my agenda as the CEO. Innovation is the creativity and finding new methods of doing things in an organization (John, 2018). It will help to reduce cases of rigidity and get rid of old and outdated ways of doing things. Innovation will help my organization to embrace technology as an easy way of doing things globally today. It will also help the organization to achieve on speed and quality, which are top of my agenda as the CEO.

As the CEO, looking at the best practices in the industry will help me make informed decisions at all times. For example, using health practitioners and care givers to provide educative information to patients will help patients a great deal. It helps to improve on a patient’s health and help in creating a unique patient experience. In this online age, it is important to ensure that information reaching my patients is authentic. It helps patients to avoid ingesting information from disparate sources throughout the healthcare ecosystem.

As we embark on looking at best practices however, there has been a recent proposal by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that seeks to pay less to physicians for some medicare patients’ complex office visits (John, 2018) Such a proposal needs to be thrown away because it may hurt physicians in specialties that treat the sickest patients and those who provide comprehensive care to patients. In my opinion, this may ultimately jeopardize patient’s access to care.

Teaching our doctors and patients the benefits of eating healthy will in a great way improve people’s health throughout the country. It might not be possible to agree on the best eating habits but some universal agreements such as eating whole foods, more vegetables and less sugar will help patients who visit us to live healthier and happier lives.

Conclusion

This paper has provided a breakdown of my plan as the CEO in ensuring quality care is top priority in the organization. The breakdown has provided my strategies on how I will ensure patients are happy and yet keep my staff highly motivated and with high level skills to take our organization to the next level. The paper has also highlighted the idea of providing educative information to our patients as a way of improving their health and giving them a unique patient experience. It also proposes a change in the proposal by CMS on paying less to physicians for some complex office visits and proposes teaching people on healthy eating as a way to lead healthier and happier lives.

References

Ahrq.gov. (2018). Understanding Quality Measurement | Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality. [online] Available at: https://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/quality-patient-safety/quality-resources/tools/chtoolbx/understand/index.html [Accessed 15 Nov. 2018].

Gunderman, R. (2009). Leadership in healthcare. London: Springer.

HealthCare.gov. (2018). Get 2019 health coverage. Health Insurance Marketplace. [online] Available at: https://www.healthcare.gov/ [Accessed 15 Nov. 2018].

Improving Value in Health Care. (2011). Washington: Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development.

John Santilli, F. (2018). Top 10 Healthcare Market Trends in 2017. [online] PubMed Central (PMC). Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5394543/ [Accessed 15 Nov. 2018].