Discuss about the New Design Process for Managing Breast Cancer Patients.
According to Slack, Brandon-Jones, Johnstone, and Betts (2015, p. 147), managers do not take part in the designing of new processes; however, they are deeply involved in the operating specification and the requirements of the new process. Due to the major advancements in technology, the processes of a majority of organizations become obsolete very fast, and therefore, the managers are forced to design a new process for improved performance. To effectively achieve this, managers are required to possess an in-depth understanding of the processes to facilitate the designing of appropriate and effective processes. For example, a manager should possess the analytical skills to analyze the characteristics and the performance of operations and processes. In line with these aspects, this paper is put into application the broad topic of process design. It is going to do this by concentrating on the process focus as discussed in class. This report is going to concentrate on the process focus of one of the major players in the health care sector of Qatar, the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).
For completing this project, I have chosen to use the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC). HMC is one of the major government-owned providers of health care services in the country of Qatar (Hamad Medical Corporation, 2015). The corporation aims at enabling and making a positive contribution towards ensuring a sustainable growth of Qatar as a country, as well as improving the lives of the populace in the nation. Its goals and objectives are aligned to the Qatari National Vision of the year 2030. It aims at doing this by combining excellent research in health care and education to provide effective, compassionate, and safe health care services to all the patients under the organisation’s care. In order to meet the incessantly increasing challenges in the health care sector of Qatar, HMC has made significant reforms. It has transformed into a successful and integrated Academic Health System, which will make critical positive changes in patient care, medical research, and medical education.
Despite all the reforms and improvements made by the HMC to address the various health care challenges in Qatari community, the HMC still lacks an appropriate and a well-designed process of dealing with breast cancer among women. Breast cancer refers to a disease whereby the cancerous or malignant cell multiplies and grow in the tissues making up the breast. Over the past decades, Qatar has recorded a rise in cases of Breast cancer among its female population (Donnelly, Al-Khater, Al-Kuwari, Al-Bader, Al-Meer, Abdulmalik, Sing, Chaudhry, & Fung, 2015, p. 3). Therefore, breast cancer has remained persistent issues of concern among the female population and the care providers in Qatar. Therefore, the health care providers in the country implement effective healthcare strategies in the treatment of cancer patients (Al-Amoudi and Abduljabbar, 2012, p. 549). The process of handling cancer patients at the HMC hospital is as illustrated in figure 1 below:
As demonstrated in figure 1 above, the process of admission, diagnosing and treating of breast cancer patient at HMC takes the general approach similar to that of handling other types of patients in the emergency department. Presently, upon admission to the hospital, breast cancer patients are taken through triage where the care providers make the decision as to who needs urgent medical assistance. The admitted patients are then divided into two categories, those with serious cases of breast cancer and those with minor cases. The patients are then assessed separately in different rooms for the appropriate treatment to be given to them.
The current process is not well-designed to handle the patients of breast cancer. As already alluded in the section above, the current organizational process is designed to take care of patients in the Emergency Department. There are several limitations to the design that limits the performance of the process, and hence, preventing it from achieving the five operations performance objectives as discussed below:
Currently, the process fails to meet cost-effectiveness as a performance objective. This is because of the many tests and processes that the patients go through from the admission to treatment (Donnelly and McKellin, 2008, p. 85). The process also fails to meet the performance objective of speed and flexibility, which are two key performance objectives towards the delivery of high-quality healthcare services. Timely delivery of healthcare services is critical for the delivery of high-quality health care services (Depke, Boreen, and Onitilo, 2015, p. 153); however, the current process is slow and cumbersome, and this is another major contributing factor towards the poor patient outcome among the victims of breast cancer at HMC hospitals.
This has made the process of dealing with breast cancer a burgeoning challenge within the Qatari Healthcare sector. Despite the reforms, inadequacy in dealing with breast cancer among women is still evident at HMC healthcare facilities and in Qatar at large (El Hajj and Hamid, 2011, p. 75). Qatari government provide health care subsidies, but practices such as screening to manage breast cancer are still very low. Therefore, to make a positive contribution towards the management of the cancer for breast among the Qatari women, the following sections are going to provide some recommendations aimed at providing solutions to this problem. It is going to do this by recommending activities that should be implemented, so as to improve the process focus of one of the specialized hospitals of HMC in handling breast cancer.
Process objectives: this refers to the ability of the process to attain its goals. The current process design of HMC only meets a number of its process objectives and significantly failing to meet other important ones (Slack, Brandon-Jones, Johstone, and Betts, 2015, p. 149). The analysis of the current process design reveals that it is not dependable, for example, it does not promote a timely delivery of healthcare services. Similarly, the current process does not meet the speed requirements as a performance objective. A timely delivery of healthcare services is vital for the improving patent outcome. However, the current process is slow. In this regard, the current fails to meet high-quality, which is an important performance objective in the healthcare, and hence, it is costly because there incessant re-admission of patients, therefore, it requires major improvements.
Process flow objectives: the current process design has limited throughput time, through rate and poor resource utilization (Slack, Brandon-Jones, Johstone, and Betts, 2015, p. 150). Currently, only a limited number of patients are treated at HMC in a day, and it takes a considerably longer duration to treat one patient. As a result, the time consumed in the treatment of patients is long, and this results into underutilization of resources, and hence, major wastages (Mitchell, Fisher, Hastings, Silverman, and Wallen, 2010, p. 288).
Process visibility: The current process design of HMC hospital is designed in such a manner that it does not meet the requirements of a process visibility. This is because most of the parts are not designed to enhance the customers’ perception regarding the process, and this interferes with the satisfaction of customers (Slack, Brandon-Jones, Johstone, and Betts, 2015, p. 154).
Task dependence: Despite the weaknesses above, the current process design of HMC clearly defines the procedures of the activities that should be followed in the delivery of services to the patients. This facilitates a smooth flow of operations in the involved departments (Slack, Brandon-Jones, Johstone, and Betts, 2015, p. 170). The establishment of well-layed down procedures facilitate the delivery of high-quality healthcare services to patients (Lindenau-Stockfisch, 2011, p. 55).
The HMC needs to overcome the inn-effective patient flow by implementing changes that would increase both employee and patient satisfaction. The most appropriate solution to this problem is to re-design the production process used in this hospital (Rayman and Edwards, 2010, p. 192). In order to ensure this, the hospital will adopt the Lean approach to improving its production process.
Based on the analysis above, there are several changes that should be made on the design process of this company to improve the delivery of healthcare services for patients with cancer of the breast at HMC.
Firstly, there should an improvement of the process objectives to ensure that HMC meets its goals and objectives. According to evidence-based practice, the delivery of high-quality healthcare services is the major goal and objective of healthcare practitioners (Fennell, Prabhu Das, Clauser, Petrelli, and Salner, 2010, p. 75). The healthcare practitioners also aim at delivering healthcare services in a timely manner and at the lowest cost possible. To meet these goals and objectives, the design process of HMC should undergo the following changes to meet the performance objectives.
Another important change that should be made in the current design process of HMC hospital is to increase the number of units that are passing the process at one given time. To achieve this, the manger should effectively configure all the activities and resources within the design process to facilitate the movement of patients (Slack, Brandon-Jones, Johstone, and Betts, 2015, p. 150). The increase of the number of units will result into an increased number of breast cancer victims that are attended to by the care givers at the hospitals. This will result into an increase throughput rate at the hospital. This will come as a major solution to the delay in treatment and poor patient outcome that has been experienced at the hospital due to the current low throughput rate (Anhang, Zapka, Edwards, and Taplin, 2010, p. 45). Similarly, the improvement of throughput rate will significantly contribute to the increase in throughput time. In this regard, the capacity of the resources at every single point in the project should be enhanced.
To improve the visibility of the process, the current process design should be modified in such manner that it takes into consideration the emotions and the feelings of the patients who are to be served (Slack, Brandon-Jones, Johstone, and Betts, 2015, p. 156). The design should consider how the patients will relate and react to the process, and therefore, the current process should be designed so that the patients are able to relate to it in a personal way. To achieve this, the process should be designed to include communication clues that facilitate the exchange of information between the patients and the care providers. This will ensure the delivery of high-quality healthcare services that improve patient outcome.
The financial cost of introducing this the Kaizen method in redesigning the process of handling the breast cancer patients at the HMC is relatively cheap. According to Scott, Ruef, Mendel, and Caronna, 2000, p. 25), the cost has been termed as a major factor affecting the access and the delivery of healthcare services. High cost prevents patients from seeking healthcare services, and hence, poor-health conditions. However, the new design process of handling breast cancer patients is going to achieve one performance objective by reducing the cost of assessing health services (Katz, 2010, p. 47). Despite this, the introduction of the new machines and technologies will require huge financial investment from the hospital. They are going to be costly to the hospital.
This new method of the organizational process will meet another performance objective of ensuring the delivery of high-quality healthcare services to patients of breast cancer because it adopts strategies that focus on the screening and assessment of screen cancer, and hence, improved patient outcome (Rosselli Del Turco, et al., 2010, p. 2350).
The new process is also fast and flexible, and hence, it will ensure the delivery of healthcare services in a timely manner to the patients of breast cancer (Winchester, 2010, p. 299). This will facilitate the achievement of another performance objective of saving time and cost. The new process is flexible, and hence, the patients will undergo a thorough screening, assessment, and treatment for improved patient outcome.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the management of breast cancer poses a major challenge to health experts in Qatar. Therefore, appropriate measures should be taken to contain the situation. This involves reforms and innovation in the process of handling this disease. Hospitals should change their process focus to enhance its management. The above activities will enable HMC to handle breast cancer by meeting the needs of their patients within the cost and other managerial constraints. Implementing these activities and processes may prove to be an extra cost to HMC, but they will ensure that facilities are organized around particular and specific activities. This will ensure the better handling of breast cancer cases among the female population in Qatar by HMC.
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