Strategic Management Plan for Home Health Agency

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Definition of Telehealth
Principles of Business impact and Evolution in Healthcare
Applications to Home Health Agency
Safety Considerations
Current State and impact of US Healthcare System
Scientific and Technology Trends
Strategy Evaluation
Conclusion
Reference List

Introduction

Metropolitan Jewish Health System (MJHS) is a non profit making organization that was founded in 1907. It offers hospital and health care facilities. This organization has its headquarters in 9323 Seventh Avenue Brooklyn, in New York. MJHS provides care to an estimate of twenty thousand persons in the Greater New York metropolitan area. Its services include home care, rehabilitation, hospice, community service and many more. It is one of the leading health care providers in New York and it is still growing. It has a unique structure that enables it to provide a wide range of services in post-acute and long-term care.

Part of the services provided by MJHS includes supporting education, research and development in search for better ways of providing effective care. Through the institute of Applied Gerontology, we have been able to come up with innovative services that have helped in improving quality of life for all people. As the director of MJHS, I have been assigned the responsibility of exploring the development of a new service that will improve our performance. I would propose Telehealth as the new service to implement in our organization. This paper explores the external, internal analysis as well as the competitive advantage of this strategy.

Definition of Telehealth

Telehealth is a health care service that is delivered through the use of telecommunications technologies. This ranges from the use of telephone to the use of videoconferencing between health care providers and their clients. This can happen in two different countries or within the same country. Sometimes, it includes the use of robotic technology (Cervinskas, et al. 1984). It is a development of telemedicine although it differs from telemedicine in that it focuses on preventive, curative, and primordial features.

Telemedicine encompasses on the curative aspect only. Telehealth is also more technically advanced than telemedicine. In telehealth, health care providers can use emails to converse with their patients, to make drug orders, or communicate with other physicians. In order to introduce this new service, there is need to carry out an internal and external analysis to access the suitability of this innovation in MJHS.

Principles of Business impact and Evolution in Healthcare

Health, care, is primarily about people-to-people interactions. It is about understanding, diagnosis, physical contact, communication and, ultimately, providing care. All of this is facilitated by the technical processes of imaging, pathological testing, information gathering, research and so forth (Hicks, et al. 2009). The task of every health care system is how to maximize the personal contact at the same time as maximizing the technical input, while all the time operating within a suitable financial framework.

People working in developing countries have had to think about how to support local clinicians who may nor have all the skills they need, how to make sure technical information is interpreted wisely in very difficult circumstances and how best to use very scarce resources (Barney, 2007). Telehealth offers help in meeting these conflicting needs by improving access to data and to individuals, while driving down the costs of doing so.

Applications to Home Health Agency

As home telehealth technologies have evolved the purpose and utilization intent has changed. When telephone technologies were first introduced into home care, research questions regarding utilization included:

Will clients use the technology?
Can clients use the technology correctly?
Will nurse incorporate telehealth technology into practice?

More recent research has focused on implementation of successful telehealth models in home care as well as studying specific clinical populations such as patients living with heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and even solitary persons living with mild dementia. Outcomes studies and demonstration projects continue to indicate that home telehealth can improve clinical outcomes as well as cost effectiveness when used correctly. Home telehealth is becoming more recognized by clinical professionals. In 1999, the American Nurses Association published competencies for telehealth technologies in Nursing (Hicks, et al. 2009). The home Healthcare Nurses Association (HHNA) has recognized telehealth as a practice intervention.

Safety Considerations

The overall goal of home health care is to help the client and caregiver transition safely and effectively to self-care. Home telehealth is one tool that facilities achievement of this goal in home care nursing. Three main goals drive home cares need to integrate telehealth into the clients plan of care:

Identify early exacerbation of the clients condition
Reduce unscheduled nurse visits
Decrease emergency room visits

It is difficult for home care nurses to cost-effectively make innumerable visits in order to ensure that the patient is safe and knowledgeable regarding their care in order to keep from returning to the hospital for the same problem. Home telehealth connects the clinician and client remotely in order to maintain contact and yet minimize extra visits and cost. Remote vital sign monitoring, also known as telemonitoring, allows clinicians to track data points that alert to early client health status changes.

Identification of early changes in vital data allows the clinician to intervene before client status decompensate, requiring an emergency room visit or acute hospitalization. When home care nurses visit clients one to two times weekly, trends in vital sign data can be missed. Home telephone health technology is one tool that home care nurses can use to identify early exacerbation (Cervinskas, et al. 1984).

Identification of early signs and symptoms of exacerbation is the key goal associated with home telehealth. Whether the signs and symptoms are related to wound infection, congestive heart failure, or asthma, it is important to define what measures indicate early exacerbation. Complexity of client conditions combined with a critical nursing shortage mandate that home care management focus on efficiency.

Home telehealth technologies offer a method for staying connected with the patient and still maintaining visit frequencies (Bashshur, et al. 2007). Telehealth is not intended to replace nurse visits; rather, it is intended to enhance and promote better communication between the nurse and client. Home telehealth thereby allows home care nurses to maintain projected frequency rates without additional unexpected visits that cost time and money.

Current State and impact of US Healthcare System

However, many questions remain about the potential value to people in resource-constrained settings such as the developed world. There are major problems in inequality access to health care in the US healthcare system, to which telehealth offers a potential solution. It may be valuable in other ways as well. Home telehealth encompasses the utilization of many different technologies that collect many types of health data. A diversity of telecommunication modalities is used to transfer health data, including plain old telephone cable television lines, satellite connections and the internet

Telehealth technology that is placed with the appropriate client will promote active participation in care. Automatic data downloading often promotes client dependence rather than critical thinking about how, when, and why physiologic data change. Telehealth systems that encourage client participation also promote self-care learning, which greatly facilities discharge from care with all goals met (Nemeth, 2008).

Technology appropriately matched with the client and caregivers skill set improves care satisfaction. Clients and caregivers enjoy the continuous link to their healthcare nurse and report reduced levels of anxiety when the technology is available around the clock. Mismatched technology can greatly increase anxiety levels and reduce care satisfaction. If clients are unfamiliar with computer, then asking them to learn computer skills during their critical recovery time will only serve to increase stress and reduce satisfaction.

Scientific and Technology Trends

Telehealth is one aspect of the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in health care. It is widely believed that ICT generally has the potential to improve clinical care and public health. In addition to facilitating medical education, administration and research, appropriate use of ICT may:

Improve access to health care
Enhance the quality of service delivery

Improve the effectiveness of public health and primary care interventions.

Strategy Evaluation

The implementation plan for this strategy allows the business to compete in the global market by producing quality services at low cost. Achieving the implementation plan takes utilization of critical success factors as well as knowledge of the organization. Identification of risks associated with the strategy and plans to combat the risks will allow the business to make necessary provision to address the situations when they occur (Mintzberg, et al 2003). The success of the strategy will be accomplished through continued evaluation of the plan to make necessary changes to realign the strategy with the businesses vision

According to Omolewu (2005), strategic management involves formulating and implementing strategies that enable the organization to reach its objectives. Therefore it is important that MJHS to measure its success in the formulation and implementation of the new service (telehealth); this is called strategy evaluation. The factors that are likely to have an impact on reaching this goal are the size of the organization, management styles, complexity of the environment, nature of the production processes, nature of the problem and the purpose and planning system (Omolewu, 2005).

Strategy evaluation is important to ensure these factors do not hinder the achievement of strategic goals and evaluation should be followed by continuous improvement. Evaluation is a continuous process, which is included in each stage of strategic management. According to Rumelt (2000) strategic evaluation should help us know if the objectives of the business are appropriate, if major policies and plans are appropriate and whether the results obtained confirm or are against critical assumptions on which the strategy rests.

Conclusion

The companys highly regarded brand name is a source of competitive advantage as it lures customer traffic. MJHSs low cost strategy offers are also an effective marketing tool. Likewise, quality appears to be the key element at MJHS as seen by its high turnover growth. The companys strong brand name is an upper hand in positioning itself with the new service. Its critical success factors include Customer Satisfaction, Management, Finance, Innovation, Production, and Service. More importantly, the organizations success in the industry is its ability to differentiate itself from its competitors.

This is done by developing and focusing on the organizations core competencies. The company seeks to standardize as much of the processes as possible. Standardized processes are important to maximize the efficiency of organizations. To achieve an acceptable level of quality, MJHS must invest in technologies and partnerships that support quality improvement and innovation an example of such strategy is telehealth.

Reference List

Barney, J. B. (2007). Gaining And Sustaining Competitive Advantage (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Pearson-Prentice Hall.

Bashshur, Rashid, et al. (2007). Telehealth. New York: Acta Press.

Cervinskas, Jenny, et al. (1984). Telehealth: telecommunications technology in health care and health education in Canada. New technologies in Canadian education. TVOntario, Office of Development Research.

Hicks, Lanis et al. (2009). The application of remote monitoring to improve Health outcomes to a Rural Area. Telemedicine and e-Health.

Mintzberg, H., et al (2003). The Strategy Process: Concepts, Contexts, Cases (4th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson-Prentice Hall.

Nemeth, C. P. (2008). Improving healthcare team communication: building on lessons from aviation and aerospace. London: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

Omolewu G (2007). Global Strategic management is the key to business success. Wilberforce University, Ohio. Web.

Rumelt, R. P. (2000). Strategy Evaluation. Web.

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