Operations Management Action Plan

Operations Management Action Plan

Project Objectives

Referencing the organization’s vision where the transformation aims to become a center of excellence that provides high quality services including new lines of treatments and become a center of research and education that will help address some of the most challenging cases in the region.

The difficulty of handing this project will relay on the scale, complexity and uncertainty of the end results (Slack, Brandon-Jones & Johnston, 2014). Operating a healthcare organization may be as complex as any other industry if not more due to the high levels of uncertainty and emergency response planning comparing to some of the other industries. Yet the challenge is to plan for the unpredictable and emergency scenarios.

In this report the discussion will take place on three main challenges that the organization as a new joint venture is setting as main objectives to achieve from an operational prospective to improve the quality of care provided by leveraging technologies and the clinical support ser, benefit analysisvices.

Planing and Control of Resources

In supply chain a large number of frameworks are established and developed in order to meet different industrial needs. DART framework was established by Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) and was used in supply chain to support the supply and demand needed through providing a logistics framework to segregate the upstream and downstream processes. The DART stands for dialogue, access, risk & benefits analysis and transparency; these are all elements   that will enable for a value creation collaboration to achieve the desired objectives (Chakraborty & Dobrzykowski, 2013).

Parts of the DART framework can be utilized to illustrate the action plan intended for this paper.

Action Plan

Objective One: Streamlining the processes related to the management of patients’ medical records and make them available at the time of the patients’ appointments; in addition to leverage the use of hybrid medical record to improve continuity of care.

Action: dialogue ‘communication’ and access ‘to information’; these two main elements are key drivers of this objective.

•   The action is to establish a clear policy with a flowchart on the process of managing medical records such as introducing track-in and track-out function using the electronic system to monitor the movement of medical records.

•   A cost-effective study can be done to evaluate the possibility of implementing RFID to track medical records within the facilities.

Risks & Transparency: There are three risk areas found for this objective and requires to eliminate obstacles to improve the outcome:

•   Healthcare providers lock on incomplete charts

•   The medical record is located in a different facility

•   The patient has multiple appointments in different clinics

•   Patient is transferring from a different facility and no historical information is available on the patient

•   Missing/lost medical records (physical file) and only electronic information is available

Objective Two: To successfully adapt and implement a world-class electronic health record (EHR).

Action: The critical success factor (CSFs) for this implementation is common a number of case studies that have undergo a successful implementation; these common factors are (Standing & Cripps, 2015) and (Deokar & Sarnikar, 2014):

•   To involve Stakeholders & users

•   To have a clear vision/plan for the role for the information & communication technology (ICT) and technical support

•   To align the implementation with the organizational mission, goals and objectives

•   To have a well-established roadmap on the implementation which will include the redesign of the current processes, integration of systems and conversion from the old to new system

•   And most importantly have a well-established communication and training plan to ensure the users buying and allow them to be part of the workflow design to achieve the desired outcome of implementing an integrated EHR

Risks & Transparency: There are two main risk areas abstracted from this objective and requires to be addressed for the success of this project:

•   Streamlining the operations management from the current process to the future one

•   The change management process of existing employees from the current processes to the new desired ones

•   Insufficient involvement of stakeholders and communication; such as lacking strong clinical leadership

Objective Three: Become a center of excellence in healthcare in the region, through transforming from a semi-private organization managed with a set budget to a private organization that requires process streamlining and efficiency in performance to create sustainability in the healthcare market.

Action: Leadership plays a great role in the success of this objective and requiring the:

•   Management should properly define the role and methods of process design and support these with the required resources (Qiang & Wood, 2006).

•   Identifying key operational changes in layout and workflow for this transition to identity and allocate the resources and time to achieve; in this example the mixed layout would be the best suitable for a healthcare institute (Slack, Brandon-Jones & Johnston, 2014). The main objective is to build a clear framework that will identify clear roles and objectives by the leadership and ensure the cascade of information to the organization as employees are the key driver for the success of this transformation.

Risks & Transparency:

•   Undergoing several change management programs (such as implementing and electronic health record and shifting operations to become a private organization) is a major shift for the employees and since change is difficult on employees early engagement may relive some of the resistance to the new changes.

•   The timeframe needed to complete this transition is required as identifying any schedule constrains from resource-constrain and time-constrain; and plan accordingly to overcome barriers that may affect the success of this transition (Slack, Brandon-Jones & Johnston, 2014).

Conclusion

‘Managing projects is, it is said, like juggling three balls - cost, quality, and time. Programme management … is like organizing a troupe of jugglers all juggling three balls and swapping balls from time to time’ (Slack, Brandon-Jones & Johnston, 2014, p. 497). The triangle of projects’ objectives allows to understand the project different requirements and what type of emphasis among the three project management objectives (cost, quality & time).

Organizations defer in operations yet applying project management support methodologies such as quality management is common practice for all industries. For instance, Lean methodology is  useful once updating or modifying a process redesign which allows to eliminate waste and non-valued processes. Moreover, these processes can help in strategizing and implementing process change. Some projects have used other quality management methodologies in post-implementation stages such as continuous improvement cycle which post-implementation committees are sustained to continue supporting any raising issues in processes and workflows and also prioritize implementation and updates needed (Deokar & Sarnikar, 2014).

In order for this project to succeed the key is leadership commitment to change and willingness to dedicate their efforts and resources to support and empower the employees to make it happen.

References

Slack, N., Brandon-Jones, A. & Johnston, R. (2014) Operations management. 7th ed. Harlow: Pearson Education.

Chakraborty, S, & Dobrzykowski, D (2013), 'Supply Chain Practices for Complexity in Healthcare: A Service-Dominant Logic View', IUP Journal Of Supply Chain Management, 10, 3, pp. 53-75, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 6 June 2015.

Standing, C, & Cripps, H (2015), 'Critical Success Factors in the Implementation of Electronic Health Records: A Two-Case Comparison', Systems Research & Behavioral Science, 32, 1, pp. 75-85, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 July 2015.

Deokar, A, & Sarnikar, S (2014), 'Understanding process change management in electronic health record implementations', Information Systems And E-Business Management, Scopus®, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 July 2015.

Qiang, L, & Wood, L (2006), 'The refinement of design for manufacture: inclusion of process design', International Journal Of Operations & Production Management, 26, 10, pp. 1123-1145, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 July 2015.