Change Management Process In Healthcare Organizations: Key Issues And Strategies

Key Drivers for Change in Healthcare Organizations

Discuss about the Change Management in Healthcare System.

Change management is linked with the ongoing growth of the organization. It is considered as the inherent part of the social and business environment. The role of change agent plays a vital role in the change management and every organization is required to bring the changes within an organization as per the time changed. Electronic health record (EHR) will be proposed in the report which defines to transform health care and improve the safety of patient. I have been asked to oversee a major change management process in my XYZ healthcare organization. The report will focus on the key issues and outline the change process that is going to take place in the health care organization. Change management theories will be described in the report to explain the change strategy in the healthcare organization. The discussion about key elements will be discussed in the report that will be facilitated to manage the change process

There are several elements that may force the organization to bring the change and these are liable to build the environment that the health organization are challenged to adopt the change quickly and embrace new technologies, approaches and process to make better process of care within an organization. There has been a major change going in the health services across the world. These driving forces can be comprised an advancement in medical technology, expectations from customers, pressure on health care sources, extra cost of delivering care and workforce shortages. Moreover, aging people and changes in the patterns of diseases are amplifying the complexities in the health care organization. As per Horning, (2011), EMR should be implemented in the organization because it is one of the effective computerized information systems that gather, stores and displays the information about the patient. An EMR allows for effective repossession and access the data of the patients. It fixed various tools regarding health and safety and able to reduce the number of prescribing mistakes, improve the decision making process and decrease the unnecessary costs (Hillestad, Bigelow, Bower, Girosi, Meili, Scoville  & Taylor, 2005).

The importance of health care organization is more important in comparison of business organization which enhances its challenges of coping with change and transformation. It is hard to compatible the interest of these associated bodies which is rarely compatible to one another due to difference in characterized with different opinions, which elaborates it is not essential all would impact the organization at the same time. In the context of XYZ health care organization, it has been analyzed by me that the vital to acknowledge the additional challenges which may not be considered as the management process and these challenges can be in the context of my organization are incongruent stakeholders, number of goals, the influence of decision of doctors and nurses on the major part of the organization’s expenditure and lack of knowledge about the changes.

Importance of Change Management in Healthcare Organizations

There is various kind of change management model, but one of them has been utilized in health care organization successfully, is John Kotter’s eight step procedure for transformational change. Kotter’s change representation is facilitated to XYZ health care organization for proposing changes in the health care organization. It included eight steps which describe the requirement of changes in the organization and help to implement the amendments within an organization.

The first step of Kotter’s change model is Established a sense of urgency, it build awareness of the requirement of the change within an organization. The leader or management of the health care organization can find out possible threats and Implement strategy to prevent from threats (Clark, 2010). It is considered as the significant step because without urgency of change people will adhere to the position and oppose change.

Create a guiding coalition is the second step. In this step the importance of the change can be shown to the people. It is required to have the efficient familiarity, reliability, influence and skills in the guiding team members (Guoyou, Saixing, Chiming, Haitao & Hailiang, 2013).

The third stage of Kotter’s change model is developed a vision and strategy. The clear and concise vision should be built that is shared by all stakeholders. It is integral that the vision should comprises with a collective sense of what a potential future looks like, in definite manner that all stakeholders of the health care organization stands behind.

The fourth step of change model is to communicate the vision .The new changed vision of an organization should be cleared communicate to the employee (Hayes, 2014). The success of proposed change is dependent on the communication way to describe the proposed change in the organization. It includes the communication the vision in words as well as action by taking some major examples.

To remove obstacles is the fifth step of Kotter’s change model which describes that the cooperation is must to remove the obstacles for implementing the change. Incentives plan should be involved to embrace the change and feedback on it can utilize a change to attain the advantages. The change cannot take place rapidly and it takes time (Rajan & Ganesan, 2017).

Building short term wins can be aided to keep the drive going. Wins can be celebrated in huge manner so that everyone can see the success which is linked to the vision and then the momentum can be utilized for proposing a new attainable aims of the organization.

John Kotter’s Eight-Step Model for Transformational Change

Implementing and sustaining the change are the main component of the seven and eight steps of Kotter’s change model which are consolidating advantages to develop the more change and securing latest approaches in the organizational culture. It has been stated by Kotter that the premature victory should not be declared earlier because various goals can be failed due to declare the premature victory. The last step of Kotter’s change model defines that there is need to be constantly focus on the changed policy to grab the opportunity and success. Strategic steps are essential to attain it until the change takes place in the organization in a permanent way.

There are various key elements which may influence the new changed policies in the health care organization. In order to evaluate the factors that what changes take will place in the organization it is required to keep focus on the several independent processes which is called variables. Internal barriers as well as external barriers are considered as the key elements which can be leadership, organizational culture, communication, resistance and governance. The change in the organization can have a huge influence on the employees and customers of the organization (Schriner, Deckelman, Kubat, Lenkay, Nims & Sullivan, 2010). Leadership is vital for the organization and the change management, the change leader plays a vital role in the organization. The organization should proper guidance to the leader of the healthcare organization. Training about the new implementing strategies should be given to leader so that he or she can continue to the employees of the organization. The implementing new strategy that is ERM is new for the XYZ organization and the entire staff of the health care system can face the challenges to run this system. That is why it is essential for the healthcare organization to hire the expert who has efficient knowledge about the new strategy and guide the entire team of the XYZ Organization. Another key element can be resistance to change from employees which should be managed during the change process. It has been analyzed that the resistance of change can be occurred due to lack of understanding of the change (McNiff, 2013). The influence of it has on them personal basis and can affect their performance. In that case, the importance of change process should be elaborated to the employees so that they can get aware about the requirements of change in the organization. It can be managed to make them aware about their personal benefits due to change management (Hornstein, 2015).

Key Elements for Change Management in Healthcare Organizations

There can be system issues such as difficulty in achieving the entire list related to patient regarding medications, number of care providers in various locations with access to partial information, illegible writing, lack of support tool regarding decision making and lack of mechanized alert systems. These descriptions can be given to the employees of the company so that they can get aware about the requirement of change (Horner, Abel, Taylor, & Sands, 2004). The importance of implementation of new technology should be cleared in the view of employees of the company. These inaccuracies could be disallowed by system interventions that make it harder for people to do something wrong and make easier things for them to do it correct manner. The safety of patient can be enhance by focusing on reducing the risk of adverse events of drug and implementing an EMR to decrease the risk (Holtz & Krein, 2011).

There are so many approaches to evaluate the success of the implementation strategies. The evaluation is integral component to analyze the success of the implementing new tool within an organization. To evaluate the success, The Organizational Change Maturity Model is utilized to elaborate the behaviors, practices and processes of an organization that facilitate reliable and sustainable change (Pöppelbuß & Röglinger, 2011). The OCMM has 5 levels of maturity that is Initial, Repeatable, Defined, Managed and Optimized.

Initial  

In an initial point, the teams of health care organization are not aware about the change management and do not take it as a formal approach for managing the people side of change. The leadership of the organization is only concentrate on the technical side of the project and in contrast employee of the organization has found out about the change first by rumors and gossip. The productivity of the employees is slowed and the turnover enhanced.

Repeatable

The major characteristics of this level are huge variations of practices remains between projects with number of various change management process. ERM is the new process in the organization. The research started in change management best practices. The support is built, gradually, for utilizing change management with executives and manager who oversee the number of projects (Lee & Kwak, 2012). It has been analyzed that at this stage change management is not entirely integrated into project management.

Defined

In this stage, the groups of the organization are emerged and initiated to utilize the structured change management process. Change management is considered as localized in specific teams or organization. Training is initiated in this level and managers of the organization now have the tools of training to coach frontline employees. A holistic methodology has been chosen to implement the change in the management (Michie & West, 2013). The program is initiated at the start of certain projects, with a huge fraction still pertaining change management as a reaction to the resistance of employee while implementation.

Managed

It is the fourth level of OCMM, the main characteristics of this model that the common change management methodologies has been opted and are progressing plans for implementing the methodology into the organization. Executives, project manager and leaders of the healthcare organization get access to training and tools. Employees of the organization get more active towards change and try to learn about the new process (Worley & Mohrman, 2014).

Optimized

The process of new proposed change has initiated in enlarge way and the managers as well as executives use the change management technique to facilitate a support a wider range of initiatives from strategy amendments to particular employee improvement (Pisano, 2015). When organization is able to introduce a high level of change management competency, the steps of change management are entirely integrated into project management

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is chosen as the approach in which the learning will be incorporated from the change process into future change management activities. it has six steps included engaging stakeholders, explaining the program, focusing the evaluation design, collecting the credible evidence, justifying conclusion and ensuring use and sharing lesson learned. To define the incorporation of the leanings from the change process in to the potential management activities, last step of being chosen of CDC model because it is able to elaborate in exact way (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009). The findings can be published in news paper and with the help of social media, the information can be sent to various people who would be facilitated to enhance the awareness of the physical activity opportunities ever further. The best feature of the program should be highlighted so that the entire team as well as the potential customers can get aware about the changed process. The implemented changes can be defined in effective manner by involving its features. With the help of report, fact sheet and presentation, the implemented changes will be produced in wider manner by using effective venue such as television, news media and social media. It has been found that the partner’s organization advantages by learning principles of evaluation that the organization can utilize to constant quality improvement within an organization.

Conclusion

It has been concluded that the health organization has to be changes as per new latest technology. The report is based on the XYZ Company in which the new technology has been produced that is Electronic health record (EHR) which defines to transform health care and improve the safety of patient. Before anticipating the amendments, it has been analyzed that the health care organization in the light of broader evidence based changes that have been influencing the health industry. it has been evaluated that the role of change management in the organization are playing a major role because it influence directly as well as indirectly the quality of the health services, the pattern of delivery and the advantages and sustainability. Kotter’s eight step change model has been utilized in this report to explain the requirement of changes in the organization and help to implement the amendments within an organization.  The proposed change is EMR that allow an efficient access to complete the information of the patient and have been shown to alleviate of the system reason of adverse system. It has been found that the change is the challenging process and organization has to put lot of efforts to get success due to change. The Organizational Change Maturity Model has been chosen as approach to measure the success of the change process. At the last, The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has been described as the approach to incorporating the leanings from the change process into future change management activities

References

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