Change Management in Health Care

Healthcare organizations are a complicated lot because of a confluence of professionals and administrations each holding seemingly conflicting interests, perspectives, and timelines. Addressing these innumerable issues in the healthcare system may prove difficult but not entirely impossible. The greatest challenge lies in patient safety, which is inextricably linked with organizational change especially in quality care delivery. Quality management in health care is highly significant to the industry and the patient; thus, practical solutions are necessary to deliver improved health and economic outcomes. Providing improved quality in patient care through change management is undoubtedly achievable, but all the stakeholders in the organization must understand and embrace the vision. Moreover, such changes can only succeed to the extent the extent where health managers realize the need for the implementation of the necessary organizational changes. Change Management offers solutions for effective implementation of healthcare reforms for delivery of quality care services.

Overcoming Resistance to Organizational Change: Strong Ties and Affective Cooptation by Battilana & Casciaro (2013)

To facilitate change in healthcare, health managers, and other stakeholders must first understand how change occurs to be able to create a setting that is conducive to reforms. Usually, as Battilana & Casciaro (2013) note, individuals influence innovation through two distinctive ways, either as change targets or as change agents. Change agents are entrusted with the necessary powers and responsibilities to effect change in practice or policies, while change targets are individuals within the organization affected by the change process. Such people include physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, and patients among others. Managing change in healthcare is about efficiently handling the complicated process through evaluation, planning, and implementing operations and strategies to ensure that the change is relevant and worthwhile. In addition to the above, effective change management is characterized by challenging the preceding old behaviors and tolerance to introduce and implement new ones.

Quality Management Systems Implementation Compared With Organizational Maturity in Hospital by Moradi, Jafari & Maleki (2015)

Although hospitals are some of the most complex organizations, health managers should focus on introducing new change management models instead of over-relying on the traditional methods. According to Moradi, Jafari & Maleki (2015), new change management practices have the ability to consider customer requirements, determine the most efficient process for the fulfillment of product or service launch, and control the processes. In the past, traditional methods have had undeniably positive results, but they have been full of fragmentation and discontinuity due to lack of systematic and holistic approach to quality improvement processes. Thus, an effective quality management system presents a structural framework and a necessity for every organization that aims at improving the quality of delivery of services to their consumers.

References

Battilana, J., & Casciaro, T. (2013). Overcoming Resistance to Organizational Change: Strong Ties and Affective Cooptation. Management Science, 59(4), pp. 819-836.

Moradi, T., Jafari, M., Maleki, M. R., Naghdi, S., & Ghiasvand, H. (2015). Quality Management Systems Implementation Compared With Organizational Maturity in Hospital. Global Journal of Health Science, 8(3), pp. 174-82.