Management / Improving Health Care Quality

Effective Negotiation and Conflict Management

How can manager’s best use the principles of effective negotiation and conflict management to resolve power struggles within health care settings

The principles that managers can apply to resolve conflicts in health sector include collaboration process. Different people such as healthcare staff should work together with a common goal of initially acquiring necessary information for the best solution. Each healthcare member should take responsibility within the area of professionalism to ensure that chances of conflicts arising are minimal (Desivilya, Somech, & Lidgoster, 2010). Using collaborative principles ensure better working relationships that result to delivering quality patient services. Collaboration principles can be applied in solving conflicts arising as a result of a shortage of healthcare staff in a particular unit. Management should encourage collaboration so that available nurses can give priority to needs of patients. Managers should induce a spirit of pooling available resources and match those resources to priority needs for quality patient services.

The principle of compromising can be applied where by health care parties involved in negotiation process divide into groups to find a solution that satisfies everyone. Example include staffs working regarding shifts, hours or sessions during holidays (Lawton, Elizabeth, Bryan, 2012).

The principle of competing strategy is where one healthcare staff tends to have more appealing and serious responsibilities that can lead to more complex conflicts from occurring. Therefore, the parties compete on who has more sensitive responsibility such as a family with young kids who require mother’s attention (Lawton, Elizabeth, Bryan, 2012).       

Leaders in healthcare sector should also apply the principle of negotiation to solve conflicts arising as a result of disagreement among healthcare professionals. Management should enforce concepts such as honesty communication. During negation, healthcare professions should aim at adjusting their differences to reach consensus. Leaders in the health sector should define main goals, needs, and requirements to ensure all individuals equally consider the aim of treating, curing, and saving a life. During negotiation process leaders should greatly emphasize on principles such as transparency, fairness as well as trust worthy of healthcare professionals while serving patients (Marcus, Dorn, & McNulty, 2012).

What types of power struggles in health care settings do you believe are most amenable to using negotiation and conflict management techniques?

Healthcare sector has several power struggles that can be solved using negotiation and conflict resolution techniques. For example, the power struggle between nurses and doctors raise conflicts. Doctors feel that they have spent a lot of time in medical research than nurses (Marcus, Dorn, & McNulty, 2012). They, therefore, consider that they have best approaches methods and most appropriate styles of doing things. Doctor’s use their power of education to rule out nurses have specific responsibility of attending minor needs of patients as well as accomplishing tasks commanded by nurses. Therefore, power struggles can lead to a decision that can highly affect patients. Thus decisions on patient’s health cause conflicts between doctors and nurses that require effective conflict resolution.  

What are specific ways to limit the potential for power abuse in health care organizations?

The potential methods that can limit abuse of power in healthcare organizations include understanding actual sources of power so that measures of controlling and managing it can be implemented. Leaders should understand how departments, groups or individuals assert their power in the name of responsibilities, duties, and roles (Lawton, Elizabeth, Bryan, 2012). The second step to minimize possibilities of abuse of power is creating new structural sources of power that intends to replace existing distribution of power. In case a particular stakeholder, department, unit or a group is discovered to excessively influence others by use of authority, power and position in the office to abuse others those abusing powers should be made to depend on others (Lawton, Elizabeth, Bryan, 2012). Orders, privileges, and authority should be diverted to other offices. In events where one or more parties are attempting to exercise superiority against other, leaders should quickly identify strategies to manage that power. Nurses, physicians, and doctors should have equal opportunities to access powers since they all handle sensitive information and life of patients depend on them. Therefore, power equality can be promoted through pursuing principles such as transparency, fairness as well as trust worthy within health care organizations.        

What specific human resource strategies and transparency mechanisms could be created within hospitals or physician practices, for example, that would help prevent any stakeholder, particularly the top leaders of an organization, from pursuing self-interested goals in suspect ways?

One strategy of ensuring that particular top leaders in an organization do not pursue self-interests include forming coalitions or alliances with the aim of strengthening individual or group interests against top management. For example, while negotiating as an individual, each physician has little power concerning the physician in charge. However, as a coalition of all physicians their views, ideas, and desires prevail. Another criterion is forming concession where a particular person can represent a view of the seniors and top management (Lawton, Elizabeth, Bryan, 2012). A representative takes information concerning desires, reactions, and views of majority physicians to seniors in a peaceful way. In case of bias members of health care can appoint another leader to present them until their grievances and rights are provided.

References

Desivilya, H. S., Somech, A., & Lidgoster, H. (2010). Innovation and Conflict Management in Work Teams: The Effects of Team Identification and Task and Relationship Conflict. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 3, 1, 28-48.

Lawton B., Elizabeth B., Bryan W. (2012). Shortell and Kaluzny's Healthcare Management: Organization Design and Behavior

Describe three major ways that you could improve the quality of healthcare in your organization.

Proactive Engagement of Target Group

One of the strategies that should ensure that members of the public are taking an active role in managing to control and maintain the health of their bodies is making health information easily accessible. People should be given right information for them to make an informed decision. The efforts that healthcare CEO should take are establishing health care education within modern technological devices such as mobile technologies, the internet, and social media. Direct educative information should also be distributed to people concerning personal health.  Some of the strategies that can be implemented to create awareness to people are through accurate precise and accurate information and sending it via phones, other mobile devices and across the internet. All targeted customers should access information easily through mobile applications, social media, hospital portals and other means of advertisements (Tsigrogianni, & Tarnanas, 2007). The intention of the engaging target group is making them work closely or associate with physicians for guidance, counseling, treatment, and consultancy. Such strategies can improve health care sector through reducing hospital visits and patients congestion. Engaging target group early in advance about the safety of their health ensure a decrease in morbidity and decreased mortality rates. Mobile based communication and the internet customer care services ensure improvement treatment at patient’s homes as well as improved solutions to emergency cases encountered by target groups. Nurses can attend targeted groups at their homes, and offices for checkups, examination and special care purposes for those with chronic diseases (Tsigrogianni, & Tarnanas, 2007).

However, creating hospital portals, mobile healthcare applications, and linking customers is an involving task, expensive and time-consuming. The strategy can only support individuals connected to network, and computer elites. The CEO also requires training new employees for managing online network systems such as web masters, and network managers. Nurses and physicians must be trained how to work with patients and attend to their cases at respective homes (Tsigrogianni, & Tarnanas, 2007). They must be willing to walk and reach targeted clients.

Analysis Techniques

CEO in healthcare sectors must apply modern techniques in collecting dynamic data and information from different sectors. Special data and information regarding treatment, health improvements should be gathered. Healthcare CEO’s should establish tools for performing demographic analysis, psychological analysis, social analysis and behavioral analysis (Simpao, Ahumada, Gálvez, & Rehman, 2014). Health data and information collection can be controlled and managed by Healthcare Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. HCRM systems should link other hospitals to analyze different cases encountered. The system should capture and share analyzed data and information comprising of diagnosis information, prescribed drugs, treatment involved, and outcomes or results. The system should provide support to the physician, patients, and other users through providing detailed reports on future trends, patterns, and expectations.  Implanting analytical tools in hospitals can greatly improve services, performance, and quality of health. Healthcare professionals can learn new diseases through getting an analysis of different diseases their diagnosis, treatments, and expected outcomes. Patients can acquire direct diagnosis through mobile applications on providing their symptoms (Simpao, Ahumada, Gálvez, & Rehman, 2014). Analysis tools make management easy as well as making the process of making a decision quickly and acceptable.

Challenges involved in implementing such systems include violating patient privacy and confidentiality through sharing, distributing and transmitting sensitive information. Maintaining using and achieving such systems require integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine learning technologies. Patient consent on registering and how data and information should be applied in the hospital is required. Providing several users with access to the system increases risks associated with cyber crimes, attacks, espionage, stealing of data and other threats (Simpao, Ahumada, Gálvez, & Rehman, 2014).     

Compliance Policies

Improving quality of health care organizations involves corresponding to policies, ethical practices, and conforming to international standards. Health compliant organization must be ISO certified. Conforming to ISO standards enhance healthcare auditing by experts according to international standards. Conforming to ISO standards makes healthcare professionals such as nurses, physicians are committed to the patient needs, and quality services (Lane, & Schur, 2010). Making compliance policies makes organization set its levels and standards of evaluation for direct monitoring employees. CEO should establish rules and regulations that govern all workers within healthcare organizations.  The example they should make sure that only the qualified, and employees with valid papers are given an opportunity to serve patients (Lane, & Schur, 2010). They should also be registered with as healthcare organizations which are internationally recognized. Professional practices should be encouraged that can promote and create a culture of the organization. Finally, CEO must ensure everyone within health sector is ethically based on behavior, dressing, communication and social aspects.

However in achieving compliance CEO’s are limited to the ruling of ISO after verifying and validating their resources, capacity, and size. Resources within the organization should be completely checked regarding compliance with compatibility, valid vendors and free from any errors. CEO should ensure that security based on systems, users personal information and patients diagnosing information should be private, confidential and secure from fraud (Lane, & Schur, 2010).      

References

Lane, J., & Schur, C. (2010). Balancing Access to Health Data and Privacy: A Review of the Issues and Approaches for the Future. Health Services Research, 45, 1456-1467.

Simpao, A. F., Ahumada, L. M., Gálvez, J. A., & Rehman, M. A. (2014). A Review of Analytics and Clinical Informatics in Health Care. Journal of Medical Systems, 38, 4, 1-7.

Tsigrogianni, K. G., & Tarnanas, I. A. (2007). Patients, Caregivers, and Telehome-Based Care Systems: A Case Study. Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 9, 3, 71-90.

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