The Asian Health Services is probably one of the unique healthcare providers. This is due to its dedication to serving all patients regardless of their economic status and race. AHS’s mission and vision statements are to provide a model of healthcare that was not there before and to ensure that the services provided were bilingual and culture-sensitive. The organization also aimed at delivering quality services rather than receiving pay. Also, AHS wants to be the advocate of nail salon workers. Additionally, the organization wants to transition into a unionized workforce and change its operations to become financially stable.
The above statements being critical to the organization, AHS has tried to develop some strategic plans to meet its mission and vision. In every healthcare organization, having a strategic plan ensures the set the organization to success. Through is, the goals of the organization are determined, and a path is created to follow so that it can motivate the employees (Regis College, 2021). Therefore, based on the statements, the Asian Health Services developed sound strategies that are well organized and calculated.
For instance, in its strategy, it has ensured that all patients are well-taken care of. In the statements, the organization was focused on administering services that were bilingual and culture-sensitive, it employed health workers who were Asians (Chung and Chin, 2015). This filled the gap that was lacking in other healthcare services as the local communities in Asia could now interact with the health workers and get assistance without worrying about the language barriers.
Strategically, the organization has tried to fulfill the vision of providing quality services to the patients to stand out from the rest of its competitors. Its approach towards this is well calculated as the organization initiates an education program for its team. AHS introduced a Teamlet model that trained its team members on effective communication and patient service skills (Chung and Chin, 2015). The approach was mixed with a Patient Navigator System that helped the organization use the various language services for the patients.
Another strategy the company has developed is becoming a union making one of the few community health centers to embrace this. The approach of becoming a union prepares the organization towards opening communication between the management and the team. However, becoming a union comes with its challenges whereby the relationship between the management the union will be unbalanced (Chung and Chin, 2015). This is because one party will gain at the expense of the other. In order to prevent this from happening, the organization developed a solution that brought balance to the idea. This included establishing a memorandum of understanding, and it influenced the management from not overlooking the community’s issues as the organization transitioned.
Prevailing Issue
The organization has certain issues that limit its progress as planned. One of the prevailing issues in question is how to retain the employees. AHS offers the best working environment for its employees and pays them well, but the employees do not stay for long (Chung and Chin, 2015). Other competitors attract the AHS employees due to their high pay of services and benefits after retirement. The organization tried fixing the issue by recruiting mid-level providers, but this acts as a temporary fix. The issue brought by this is how the organization will support the mid-level providers. On top of this, the organization recruits early-career people and teaches them skills (Chung and Chin, 2015).
However, they at times lose some of them to other organizations hence affecting its services. This issue is also linked to the financial problems of the organization. Being a not-for-profit organization, AHS depends highly on government funds and donations. The organization receives a lot of patients, and this has greatly affected the panel size (Chung and Chin, 2015). As such, AHS team members experience burnout while working and this leads to some of them going to other competitors.
Strategic Planning Concern
The overall strategic planning concern for the healthcare organization is improving the welfare of the health practitioners. Every employee in various businesses wants to have a working environment that is fair and does not jeopardize their wellbeing (Johnson et al., 2018). However, working in a healthcare organization with fewer employees and more patients to take care of can result in employee burnout. Burnout reduces performance, thus limiting the health practitioners from providing quality services to the patients as expected, and to some extent, it leads to early retirement or transferring to another organization (Johnson et al., 2018). Therefore, if the wellbeing of the health practitioners is handled, their retention will be high, thus limiting the organization from ruining its services and saving its brand.
Role of Healthcare Manager
In strategic planning, the manager leads the team towards the efforts of achieving the goals of the organization. In the specified issue facing AHS, the healthcare manager’s role is to find the solution to the problem. The manager knows about the employees as they interact daily and it is their duty to ensure the employees have a good working environment (Janati et al., 2018). Thus, as a manager, the individual will look at the challenges the employees are facing by interacting with them at an individual level to get honest answers. After this, it will be appropriate to develop strategies to improve the status of the healthcare workers to improve employee retention rate.
Key Stakeholders
The prevailing issue in AHS affects the key stakeholders of the organization. The stakeholders involve the leaders, patients, and health practitioners, such as nurses and physicians. The mentioned stakeholders are significant because they are directly affected by the issue. When developing the strategic plan to minimize the issue faced by the organization, both of these stakeholders will play a different role. Patients as stakeholders play the role of contributing to the ideas of the organization (Dal Mas et al., 2020). This could include sharing their thoughts of whether they can be comfortable if given services via phone calls or emails as it will influence the panel size. In turn, the health practitioners will have enough time to cater to other patients easily hence reducing burnout.
The other stakeholder is the leaders of the organization, as they are the head. It is through the leaders that the employees are able to feel their needs are taken care of. As such, the leaders assist with communication and ensuring the employees are satisfied with work (Dal Mas et al., 2020). They can do this by awarding loyalties and incentives based on the performance of each employee. This will assist in retaining the employees as they will feel appreciated. Additionally, the health practitioners as stakeholders assist in improving a healthy working environment. Health practitioners are the ones who face lots of challenges that make them look for alternative jobs (Dal Mas et al., 2020). Thus, in strategic planning, healthcare practitioners can improve employee retention if they share their problems with the management rather than going to other organizations.
References
Chung, K., and Chin, W. N. (2015). Asian Health Services: Rediscovering a Blue Ocean [PDF]. Web.
Dal Mas, F., Biancuzzi, H., Massaro, M., & Miceli, L. (2020). Adopting a knowledge translation approach in healthcare co-production. A case study. Management Decision. Web.
Janati, A., Hasanpoor, E., Hajebrahimi, S., & Sadeghi-Bazargani, H. (2018). Evidence-based management–healthcare manager viewpoints. International journal of health care quality assurance. Web.
Johnson, J., Hall, L. H., Berzins, K., Baker, J., Melling, K., & Thompson, C. (2018). Mental healthcare staff well‐being and burnout: A narrative review of trends, causes, implications, and recommendations for future interventions. International journal of mental health nursing, 27(1), 20-32. Web.
Regis College, 2021. Understanding strategic planning in healthcare organizations. Regis College Online. Web.
