Management and Its Basic Functions
Despite the frequent use of the title manager to refer to a senior executive of a firm and the term supervisor to a person who oversees the firm’s processes at the lowest level in the cooperate world, the two terms are inherently the same. A healthcare supervisor is, therefore, a manager in their own right. The principles of good management apply in healthcare management just as they would apply in any other field. Good management practice can enable a healthcare manager to motivate other employees, solve problems, and ultimately enable their organization to achieve its objectives (Liebler & McConnell, 2012). Management a composite role that is composed of numerous small functions. The five chief functions of management as stated in McConnell’s “The Effective Health Care Supervisor” are planning, organizing, directing, coordinating, and controlling. This paper discusses the various functions of management and the influence that this course, HSC 520, has had on my perception of healthcare management.
Planning is an essential function of a healthcare manager. A plan refers to the most effective course for achieving a defined goal according to a person or group of people (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). This is one function of management that can typically separates a good manager from any other manager since prior planning allows things to run smoothly in an organization. Moreover, prior planning eliminates most hitches in a system, hence, enhancing its effectiveness.
To make a good plan, a manager needs to flexible. The flexibility of a good manager will allow them to collaborate with the top leadership of the organization and other levels of the organization’s management so as to ensure that the plans settled upon are in agreed upon unanimously (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). In addition, the ability to make good plans is dependent on the planner’s knowledge of the amount of resources available in an organization and the defined future objectives of an organization. Knowledge of these factors will enable the planner to make effective plans that can be implemented without straining the accounts of the organization beyond a limit (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). Vast knowledge of the organization’s future objectives will also enable the planner to make plans that do not antagonize or hinder achievement of the set objectives. In a hospital situation, planning is crucial to patient care and for patient satisfaction. But then, the big question lies on what a health care manager plans.
First, a health care manager plans staffing of his office and other offices involved in healthcare. A good staffing plan should clearly outline staffing strategies for both long-term and short-term. A good staffing plan should aim at hiring the right people that can enable an organization to achieve its objectives (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). A good staffing prevent a hospital to get to a crisis of inadequate staff or to have too many staff for the number of patients they have to handle.
Second, a health care manager plans the staff schedules in a health facility. Schedules for the work-shifts of various groups of workers are best made by the health care manager in consultation with the leadership of those groups, for instance, preparation of a good nurse schedule will require the active participation of the head of nursing services (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). Their involvement in the process of making schedules for the various groups of workers in an organization can enable health care workers to effectively monitor and supervise the workers; it will be much easier for the health care manager to determine defaulters.
Third, a healthcare manager plans drug, equipment. and amenity delivery to a facility. This function also requires the planner to be flexible and to collaborate closely with other areas in a health facility (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). Moreover, to properly do this, a planner needs to have a vast knowledge of the facilities resources and the rate of resource utilization by the facility (Liebler & McConnell, 2012). Among the most important services that a health care manager needs to ensure their delivery are electricity and piped water.
A healthcare manager is an organizer. Through this purpose, an organizer dictates the whole process of health care delivery. Organizational structure is key to a health care facility as it dictates the effectiveness and success of daily activities in the facility. Organization ensures smooth flow of commands from the top level of management to the lower levels (Liebler & McConnell, 2012). This will call for the development of a proper organization structure with clearly defined levels of command.
A healthcare manager designates the responsibilities and tasks to various health care workers based on their competence. This calls for the health care manager to have a vast knowledge of health care delivery so as to understand the functions of every health care worker. The first step of achieving proper organization is ensuring that the various departments of a health care facility have good leadership.
A health care manager is a director. He or she directs all activities of the healthcare system and the workers (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). As the director, the health care manager has the mandate of receiving all reviews of a healthcare facility and working with them. Though they may not be the dean of medicine of a facility, health care managers are mandated to listen to and act upon both the complaints of doctors and the complaints against doctors. This will require the health care director to work closely with the dean of medicine who has the duty to determine whether doctors have engaged in malpractice or not and handle it (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). The health care manager is the first person that patients are likely to report their complaints to; he needs to work upon this promptly.
A health care manager also directs all the other groups of health workers in an organization directly and indirectly. Direct direction of the workers is through receiving complaints about the various departments or from the departments and working with them promptly (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). Indirect direction involves revision of an organization’s objectives and ensuring that the various departments in the facility work towards the achievement of these objectives. Proper direction is essential in a health facility as it ensures that everyone at the facility has a similar goal hence collaboration in patient management and improvement of health care delivery is made possible.
Coordinating is another key function of healthcare management. According to Walshe and Smith (2011) This is the function of a health care manager that ensures that the health care facility functions as one unit for the good of all at the organization and ultimately for the good of the patient. All the departments of a health care facility are aimed towards the provision of effective patient care, the presence of a good coordinator is a requirement for this to be achieved. Coordination simply involves the integration of the other management functions especially planning, organizing and staffing.
A health care manager exercises his coordinating role during meetings. Here, they inquire of the progress of the various departments and give reactions that will ensure that all the departments of an organization are on a similar page. For this reason, a good coordinator must be a good communicator, a good supervisor and a good director (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). One is more likely to coordinate various departments better if they are involved in the direction of activities of each and every department.
Finally, a health care manager is a controller. Proper control ensures that every function of an organization is set and is operating well (Walshe & Smith, 2011). A good controller needs to first set performance standards and make them known to all in the organization. Later, the controller simply reviews the performance of all the workers and compare them to the set standards. This enables the controller to deal with workers who are not performing individually and to identify problematic departments. This leads us to another vital role of a controller – identification of problems and addressing these problems in the system promptly.
Directing, controlling, and coordinating are the management functions that consume most of a health care manager’s time (Walshe & Smith, 2011). These functions are to be reviewed and ensured every day unlike planning and organizing, which can be done at the beginning of a certain time period and reviewed periodically. Therefore, their proper implementation is essential in ensuring the successful organization of essential company events.
The whole duty of health care management is to ensure proper patient care and satisfaction. One of the ways of achieving the patient’s satisfaction is first by ensuring satisfaction of staff. A manager should focus their efforts on ensuring that the health care workers in a health facility are satisfied (Liebler & McConnell, 2012). The focus of management is, therefore, the people. The opinions of the people are necessary to ensuring that various projects can be implemented successfully. Even, in their managerial duties, proper coordination with the people will ensure great success for a health care manager.
HSC 520 has influenced my perspective of healthcare management greatly but positively. Before doing this course, I always thought that a manager refereed to a top level executive who has the mandate to single-handedly fire workers who are not functioning well. For this reason, I always thought that managers were people who were feared for their power. I also thought that, in order to maintain their power and statuses, managers were not to collaborate with other people in an organization or to ask for opinions of the other people before making decisions. My perspective did not allow me to picture exactly what a health care manager does. I always pictured a tough-talking orthopedic surgeon who fires doctors and has the power to eliminate nurses from a facility by word of mouth.
Through HSC 520, I can now appreciate who exactly a health care manager is and what they do. A health care manager is much unlike the egomaniac tough-talking orthopedic surgeon I pictured before; rather, he is a person who speaks to and listens to everyone in the facility. I have also learned that a health care manager is more of a first line manager than a top level executive. He or she simply coordinates and controls activities at the lowest levels in a health care facility which the point of delivery of the service to the patient. Moreover, the course has taught me that unlike what I thought, an ability to listen to each and everybody and consider the opinions of everyone at an organization before making decisions is important to the success of a health care manager and their strategies. Strategies which are imposed against other staff are more likely to fail. I have now known that even though a health care coordinator plans for staffing, they do not necessarily fire workers by word of mouth or baselessly.
Having learned this course, I am looking forward to making a good health care a manager in the future. I would like to be health care manager who listens carefully and considers the opinions and needs of all people before making decisions. I would love to be a manager who controls people by the standards and plans they made. I would like to make a manager who can enable any health facility to achieve their long-term and short-term objectives successfully.
References
Buchbinder, S. B., & Shanks, N. H. (2012). Introduction to health care management. Burlington (MA, USA): Jones & Bartlett Learning
Liebler, J. G., & McConnell, C. R. (2012). Management principles for health professionals. Sudbury, Mass: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Walshe, K., & Smith, J. (2011). Healthcare management. Maidenhead: Open University Press, McGraw-Hill.
