Hospital Operations Mismanagement: Causes and Implications of It

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Causes of hospital operations mismanagement and how to assess them

Poor operational wok systems cause hospital operations mismanagement. In the past, most hospitals assumed that poor operations mismanagement occurred purely as a result of individuals’ failures within institutions. Stakeholders assumed that a number of them were not fully educated about the law; therefore, proper training and legal punishment would put them back on the right track. While this may be true to a certain extent, stakeholders now accept that the biggest problem in most hospitals is the systems put in place. Many failing hospitals lack operation systems that will provide patients access to superior and safe medical care. These institutions tend to possess vertical structures that revolve around medical specialists rather than performances. Doctors and other care professionals lack information, which leads to a disconnect between patient outcomes and doctors’ expectations. This is mostly because of the prevalence of poor communication. Poor structural alignment in most institutions causes stakeholders to make decisions on the basis of intuition, power or even politics; very little has to do with the facts on the ground. Several hospitals tend to dwell on the needs of various departments rather than patients’ needs. This creates a conflict between these units as they have varied needs or responses (Tucker & Spear 645).

Operations mismanagement also emanates from continual focus on certain symptoms of a problem rather than the root causes. One should note that this superficial focus does not just apply to patient treatments, but also to the manner in which these entities deal with their tasks, decisions and operations.

A number of hospitals also experience operations mismanagement because entities do not try to learn from one another, or cooperate with one another. These adversarial relationships between medical units come at the expense of the concerned patients within that hospital.

Additionally, mismanagement also comes from the fear of improvement. Some doctors and other staff members may develop the assumption that no change can ever take place in their enterprise. That attitude may become a self-fulfilling prophecy because changes become doomed even before they start.

Hospitals can assess these inefficiencies in their operations systems through a scientific approach. They can manage patient inflow or volumes in every part of the institution. Hospitals ought to have a maximum number of patients that any given department can handle. If the specialists exceed the number of surgeries for that day, then the institution should put a stop to more procedures. Studies illustrate that when excessive patient numbers overburden doctors or nurses, then their accessibility, quality of delivery and efficiency goes down. Additionally, these doctors or other professionals will increase the number of patients who require preventive care as they are likely to have misdiagnosed or provided the wrong quality of care. Therefore, each unit within a hospital should account evenly for the number of patients within that institution.

An institution may also assess poor hospital operations mismanagement through the discharge rates prevalent within the institution. If hospital stays become excessive, then the concerned facility needs to realize that there is an operational mismanagement issue. They can proceed by identifying some of the causes behind this occurrence and then look for a way forward. These observations and discussions need to be done on a regular basis such that they do not spiral out of control.

Implications of the mismanagement of hospital operations for the stakeholders of the organization

When stakeholders poorly manage hospital’s operations system, then chances are that the readmission rates will be quite high. Doctors, nurses and other professionals may not cope with their workload or deal with patients satisfactorily. This means that the treatments they provide will either be wrong or inadequate. Patients will thus need to come back to the hospital in order to deal with their health problems again. In certain circumstances, these poor treatment outcomes may even lead to fatal scenarios. Medical errors are likely to increase as most professionals will be struggling to cope with the vast numbers of patients.

On top of this challenge, poorly managed hospital operations often cause patients to wait for long hours in order to see general practitioners or other specialists. This minimizes the quality of care because patients will only get a minimal amount of time to spend with the medical professional, despite spending a considerable of time in a hospital (Ornstein 15).

Patients also suffer from increased hospital costs when mismanagement occurs. This may come about as a result of the mistakes that the mismanaged hospitals made. Alternatively, it may be a result of the persistent medical problems that the latter institution did not address. For instance, a surgeon may leave a foreign object in a patient’s body owing to a tight schedule; this may cause the patient to develop gangrene or even worse conditions.

Alternatively, a hospital with mismanaged hospital operations may handle patients inadequately during an outbreak and thus lead to the spread of disease around the institution’s environment. Not only will this affect the actual patients in the hospital, but it will also lead to the creation of other patients in the institution. Therefore, poorly managed hospital operations sometimes lead to even more problems among the patients that had previously exited. This is pitiful and unacceptable especially with regard to hospital missions and objectives. When these dire situations arise, they tend to undermine the exact principles that led to the development or instatement of those hospitals in the first place.

Hospital administrators and directors also tend to experience a lot of difficulties when their employees manage their institutions’ operations poorly. This is because they will be spending resources on solving the wrong problems without getting to the underlying issue. For instance, a hospital that focuses its treatment plans on doctors’ schedules rather than patient outcomes tends to get overwhelmed by overcrowding in some units and underutilization in other entities. Instead of redistributing patient care around various units and instituting a care system that will work well for the clients, these hospitals will dwell on increasing capacity. Such a strategy will add to hospital costs and may not even improve efficiency.

Poorly management hospitals operations tend to cause a lot of stress among the concerned professionals. Nurses and doctors derive satisfaction from their ability to provide acceptable results. When these outcomes become few and far between, then chances are that most of them may lack job satisfaction. Issues of resignation may become more prominent in the institution, and it could develop an ill reputation as a dreadful employer. This may create a cycle of even worse performance in the organization because doctors will only work there as a last result.

Works Cited

Ornstein, Charles. “Report details risks to patient’s lives.” Los Angeles Times, 2007: 15. Print.

Tucker, Anita & Spear, Steven. “Operational failures and interruptions in hospital nursing.” Health Service Research 41.3(2006): 643-662. Web.

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Hospital Operations Mismanagement: Causes and Implications of It

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