Management_Roles_and_Goals_Paper

Management Roles and Goals Paper Monique Dillon Johnson OPS/HC 571 Health Care Operations Management February 21st, 2011 Christopher Kelley Healthcare Operations Management Healthcare Operations Management is a principle that includes the responsibility of overseeing, designing and redesigning, health care operations in the production of goods and services. This type of management involves ensuring the responsibility of integrating scientific principles of management to determine the most effective methods to support patient care delivery (Langabeer, 2008). Healthcare operations management tends to be a complicated method because the service and products rendered to patients are intangible, which requires the output to be based on employee empowerment as well as technical enhancements, supply chain management, and high levels of patient care services. The operations management has many roles and goals to accomplish to address the issues of cost quality, productivity, processing, and technology enhancements. Roles of Operations Management The role for Healthcare Operations Management is to turn organizational assets into profitable goods and services. Operations management is responsible for planning, developing, monitoring, and controlling all assets to deliver quality patient care. "The nature, scope, characteristics and customer focus of today's market are forcing modern organizations regardless of their product/ service offerings to operate as open, operational, strategic systems" (Miller, 2006, p. 540). This change in the health care market requires operations management roles to be guided by a new business model that focuses on the importance of innovation and an information technology that can acquire and share knowledge at lightning speed in an ever-changing market under extremely competitive pressures. The operations management role must include an extensive focus on " workflow, physical layout, capacity design, physical network optimization, staffing levels, productivity management, supply chain and logistics management, quality management and process engineering" (Langabeer, 2008, p. 6). Operational management role is to make sure that each of functions list above is running at optimal performance levels to maximize the healthcare organization's profitability in order to continue to provide quality care to the community in which they serve. Goals of Operational Management Operations management has many goal attainments to achieve to remain competitive in today's globalized market. The mainstream goals that operations management face include " reducing costs, reduce variability and improved logistics flow, improve productivity, improve quality of customer service and continuously improve business processes" (Langabeer, 2008, p. 9). Cost reduction in any healthcare organization is a major focus to improve profitability and efficiency. In order to achieve cost reduction it is imperative that operations management focus on employee staffing because not only is payroll the most controllable expense in any organization but also supply waste and employee performance error contributes to cost influx. Great customer service goes helps achieve goal attainment because it helps reduce medical errors, improves patient safety, and increases patient satisfaction. Standardization of work flow and logistics decrease patient admittance errors, mishandling of medication disbursement and improved record keeping. In order for operations management to achieve each goal effectively, it is imperative that the empowerment concept is applied to promote individual accountability to the healthcare organization's viability. Most Important Role of Operations Management The most important role for operations management is the ability to motivate the staff to comply with regulations needed to be enforced to achieve optimum efficiency. Operations Management can motivate employees through empowerment. " Empowering refers to the capacity of a manager to recognize the abilities of others and to create an environment in which those abilities can be used to good effect ( in particular to assist in changing and improving the organization" (Lloyd, 1999, p. 87). Empowerment utilization makes the staff feel like their knowledge and opinions are valuable, which promotes increased productivity and creativity. Operations Management main goal objective is efficiency. This can only be achieved if the employee is satisfied and feels valued. "Empowerment involves a delicate balance between the empowerment of medical staff and the power and responsibilities of management" (Lloyd, 1999, p. 90). Therefore, it is imperative that operations management provide empowerment guidelines that give medical staff freedom to make educated decisions to improve efficiency but not to the extent that could hold the healthcare organization liable or non compliant to federal or state regulations. Reference Langabeer, J. (2008). Healthcare operations management:A quantitative approach to business and logistics. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett. Lloyd, P. B. (1999). Empowerment and the performance of health services. Journal of Health Organization and Management , 83-94. Miller, P. Y. (2006). Anempirical investigation of quality improvement initiatives in for profit and non profit hospitals. Thomas W International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance 19.7 , 539-550.