Situation Audit of MedStar Healthcare

Introduction

This assignment majorly deals with conducting a situation audit and analysis of some key factors of MedStar Healthcare. It involves an analysis of the factors that together make the face of the organization. The analysis uses information available to the public. Discussed in the analysis include key organizational facts, mission, visions, values, and goals of the company, organizational strategy and objectives, competitive advantage, size and structure, critical resources of the organization, leadership, governance and management, SWOT analysis, and the capacity to learn.

MedStar Healthcare is acknowledged as the largest healthcare provider in Maryland and Washington DC. The health facility has ten hospitals, a research institute, and medical groups. Other services offered include programs and services recognized regionally and nationally for their achievement in medical care. The healthcare facilities offer primary care, urgent care, and home healthcare services to the communities and homes across the region. MedStar Healthcare also caters for non-acute care patients through the sub acute, assisted living, and long-term care services.

Organization Fact Sheet

MedStar Health was opened in I854 with the first facility being the MedStar Union Memorial Hospital. MedStar operates as a not-for-profit organization in the health sector industry dedicated towards making investments in the health and wellness of the communities where it offers its services. The organization’s facilities include 10 hospitals, urgent care and ambulatory centers, and physicians’ offices. It has over 30,000 associates with another 6,000 affiliated physicians and approximately 1,100 residents’ fellows engaged in over eighty teaching programs (MedStar, 2015). It has facilities in over 100 locations across Maryland and Washington DC. MedStar Health is guided by a patient-first philosophy that points to care, compassion, clinical excellence, and customer service.

MedStar Health reports show that is treats over 500,000 patients every year. The annual inpatient admissions reached 163,000 with a total of over 800,000 annual inpatient days. The annual emergency visits (ED) reaches up to 478,000. The recorded number of annual outpatient visits is over 200,000 by the beginning of 2013 (Tori, 2013). The facility recorded 200,000 home health visits per year. The patients enrolled in clinical trial annually is 2,700. The facility records an average of 12,000 births per year and performs 114,000 surgeries (Tori, 2013).

Currently the $5 billion not-for-profit company is headed by Kenneth Samet who is the President and CEO. He has over 30 years’ experience in health administration, thereby offering to the hospital the strategic insight and management required for the day to day running of the largest healthcare provider in Maryland and Washington D.C area (MedStar, 2015). The CEO has managed to uphold the status of the healthcare delivery system which includes hospitals, health related business such as research, ambulatory, home health, multispecialty physician network, and health insurer. It is no surprise that the facility is one of the region’s largest employer.

Organization Mission, Vision, values

MedStar Healthcare is guided by a vision of being a trusted leader in caring for people and advancing health. The mission of this healthcare facility is “To serve our patients, those who care for them and the communities” (MedStar, 2015). To fulfill the above stated mission and achieve the desired vision, MedStar Healthcare is guided by the value of service. The healthcare service anticipates and aims to meet the needs of the patients, physicians, and co-workers.

Patient first – the facilities of this organization strive to offer the best to every patient. Integrity – requires the organization to communicate openly and honestly in an attempt to build trust and offer the best ethical standards. Respect – the company treats each individual, offers service to its clients and partners, and does so following the highest professionalism and dignity standards. Innovation – the health care facility aims to institute change and work to improve all operations in a responsible financial manner. The last value guiding the organization relates to teamwork where system effectiveness is pegged on the collective strength and cultural diversity of all stakeholders and ensuring that they operates in a manner ensuring open communication and mutual respect (MedStar, 2015).

The mission, vision, and values of this organization help guide its employees on how to conduct themselves. Employees are compelled to understand that all activities are oriented towards serving the patients and care providers. The values dictate the manner in which the services are offered in this healthcare facility. Employees are meant to understand the critical faith that the patients have in the organization (MedStar, 2015). They are to be treated with respect. Communication with the patient, caregivers, and other physicians has been highlighted as paramount for the success of the organization. The company’s employees are tasked with the responsibility of coming up with innovative methods of offering care. They are required to collaborate as a team and leverage on each other’s strengths.

Organizational Strategy and Objectives

MedStar Healthcare was faced with hard times that required it to shift from competing through providing integrated, comprehensive medical service to a set-up that allowed it to offer lower cost preventive care. The healthcare’s strategic plan had been too focused on re-imagining the company in 2020. The long term objective of the organization was to increase revenue and profits and ensure a reduction in medical costs (MedStar, 2015).

This strategy was considered as unsustainable prompting the leader to go back to the drawing board and develop another more suitable strategy. They mapped out a future where care would be offered outside the healthcare facilities at a fraction of the cost. The strategy would be structured into a model where MedStar Healthcare would get compensated to keep patients well. The challenge with such a long term plan was managing and keeping it on track for a period more than a decade.

The objectives identified in the new strategy included diversifying operations to include even the general-population health insurance and engaging in ambulatory care with outpatient location that would preempt visits in the current locations where over 30,000 employees were engaged. The long term goal set here aimed at creating a major business growth. To achieve this, three business portfolios, each with a specific business objective and time limit were instituted. These include; the future state portfolio, innovative portfolio, and investment portfolio (Johnson, 2015).

The future state portfolio bears an objective of helping in collating a picture of the organization’s state 10-20 years in the future (Johnson, 2015). It is aimed at identifying where to play and strategies to apply in each place. This ought to point out new-growth opportunities which could either be new categories of clients or serving the existing ones in new ways. The innovation portfolio’s objective was to define the exact initiatives that the healthcare facility would launch in a span of one to two years in an effort of attain the long-sighted future state. This covered both near-term projects required to enhance the core business and the new growth projected spotted as being capable of helping the organization attain its long-term business transformation (Johnson, 2015). The investment portfolio was comprised of the budgets required to fund the projects in the innovation portfolio and the new initiatives for the main business. The objective under this section was to allocate the pool of resources and money to various initiatives and see that the projects evolve and progress in importance over time (Johnson, 2015). In this sector, the healthcare facility required to strike a balance between its pursuit of improvement to its hospitals and new-growth initiatives.

Strategy Types and Competitive Advantage

The corporate strategy adopted at MedStar Healthcare shifted the focus from integrated and comprehensive medical services to providing lower cost preventive care and getting paid for doing so. Part of this strategy involves engaging in the health insurance business. The health care facility sough to attain a competitive edge by introducing a component of population health management approach. The aim of this was to strike new growth by becoming a large healthcare insurer rather than just a healthcare provider. Adopting this strategy offered the company a competitive edge that would benefit it by reducing costs, utilizing care, and increasing the quality of care offered by the organization. To realize this strategy, MedStar Healthcare acquired licenses in Columbia and Maryland, granting it permission to introduce a general health insurance plan (Finnegan, 2015).

The organizational strategy adopted by MedStar HealthCare includes sharing administrative and physician leadership. The MedStar Good Samaritan and MedStar Union Memorial Hospitals sought to unify efficiency and excellence by integrating their administrative managers and operating under a single president. This organizational strategy proved to be the best source of competitive advantage in the healthcare industry. For the hospital campuses, being close to each other provides them with a better position and structure to deal with the future due to shared geography, community access, clinical excellence, operational efficiency, and population health management. Under this plan, each of the integrated hospitals retains its own board of directors, medical staff, and core community services. The model, of merging the facilities’ leadership provided a competitive edge by availing the structure necessary for driving efficiencies forward, recognizing additional integrated services and growth opportunities necessary for increased hospitals (Medstar Health, 2015).

Organization Size and Structure

MedStar Health is the largest healthcare provider in Maryland and Washington D.C. Collectively, the facility has 10 hospitals, a research institute, and wide scope of health-related organizations. The facilities are renowned regionally and nationally for their excellence in medical care. The organization boasts one of the largest graduate medical education programs in the country with the capacity of over 1,000 medical trainees annually. The MedStar Health community has 30,000 associates and with 6,000 other affiliated physicians who implement the patient first philosophy that includes care, compassion, and clinical excellence in a manner that puts high regard on customer service (MedStar Health, 2015).

MedStar Health’s net worth is approximately $5 billion. In the fiscal year 2015, the total number of inpatient admissions was 143,664 and number of observation stays was 60,864 patients (MedStar Health, 2015). In the outpatient section, MedStar Health had approximately 266,778 home health visits, 547,472 emergency department visits, 1,696,460 physician office visits, and 1,821,997 ambulatory visits and surgeries (MedStar Health, 2015). The employees in this organization include 31,000 associates, residents, and fellows. Nurses make up 8700 of the total employees (MedStar Health, 2015).

MedStar Health has diversified the scope of services structured into hospitals, clinical research and innovation, home health care, community service, managed care organization, nursing homes, and senior living. The structure of the organization includes an interdisciplinary team of physicians, nurses, researchers, and support staff. The focus of the whole team is to provide care for the patients and the family members. The facilities and team described above offer an opportunity for the organization to provide the highest quality and advanced care. This has seen the organization attain its strategic objectives of providing services close to patients’ homes. Being a not-for-profit organization, MedStar Health makes an effort to reinvest in the health and enhanced wellness of the community. The organization of MedStar Health facilitates the combination of best practices in academic medicine, research, and innovation to make it possible to offer a wide spectrum of clinical services to advance patient care. The organization possesses clinical excellence in areas such as cardiology & cardiac surgery, orthopedics, cancer transplantation, rehabilitation and emergency, and trauma services (MedStar Health, 2015).

For the last five years, MedStar has undergone various changes to its current state. In 2011, its facility on Diabetes was recognized as a winner of the Microsoft Health Users Group Innovation Award. In 2012, MedStar Health launched a new system-wide brand strategy meant to change the corporate orientation and how the system would be marketed in Maryland and Washington DC. MedStar visiting Nurse Association had an expansion in its services through acquisition of other facilities. A heart Institute was established to enhance excellence, experience, innovation, and commitment to research and advancement of heart medicine. MedStar continued its development streak by instituting a system-wide population health management initiative. This helped move the organization towards a strategy that adopted a comprehensive approach in offering healthcare benefits in a manner that transforms the healthcare experience. MedStar Health also initiated a High Reliability Organization that was oriented towards attaining a patient safety culture that would help attain zero preventable harm.

In 2013, MedStar Health managed to expand its reach in Baltimore area and in Washington D.C areas. The healthcare facility sought collaborations with other heart specialist centers in an attempt to offer new and enhanced treatment options to patients and increase the pace of advanced research in Cardiology and Cardiac surgery. In 2014, MedStar Health started a comprehensive, integrated, multispecialty care center in Baltimore. It also began collaborative efforts with CVS Health as it sought to enhance access to high-quality and affordable healthcare services. MedStar entered into more strategic alliances with different healthcare providers as a means of advancing the quality and efficiency of patient care through the adoption of Health Information Technology. In 2015, MedStar Health continued its expansion streak in Baltimore and other places (MedStar Health, 2015).

Critical Resources of MedStar Health

Financial Resources

In 2015, MedStar Health reported a net operating revenue of over $5 billion. During this year, the health facility spent $4.87 billion on caring for the patients. In this period, $160.8M of the earnings from operations was reinvested. The investment that was channeled to information technology was $60 million. The organization also engaged in philanthropic activities worth $31.9 million (MedStar Health, 2015).

MedStar Health’s cash and cash equivalents in 2016 were $572.1 million as compared to a figure of $572.3 million the previous year. The value of investments by the organization increased from $74.9 million in 2015 to $122.0 million in 2016. Some financial assets that did not have much variation between 2015 and 2016 include other receivables apart from those accruing from patient services, inventories, prepaid and other current assets. The total current assets owned by MedStar health in 2015 was $1479 million and increased to $1601.8 million in 2016 (MedStar Health, 2015; MedStar Health, 2017). Other assets owned by the organization include investments, assets with restricted use, property and equipment, interest in net assets, goodwill, and other intangible assets. Cumulatively the company had total assets valued at $4718.8 million in 2016 as compared to $4690.9 million in 2015.

Physical Assets

MedStar Franklin Square Medical Hospital. This health care facility under the MedStar Health wing is located in Northeast Baltimore County and has the largest community teaching hospital in Maryland. The facility is equipped to offer a full range of services for children and adults. Its emergency department receives more patients annually than any other hospital in Maryland (MedStar Health, 2014).

MedStar Harbor Hospital. This facility was established in 1903 and has grown alongside the community it serves. The facility offers a full range of healthcare services for patients of all ages. The facility has specialty sections dealing with orthopedics, women’s services, cancer center, diabetes, fetal assessment, cardiopulmonary rehabilitation and issues of chronic lung conditions.

MedStar Good Samaritan Hospital. This is a comprehensive community hospital found in the Northeast Baltimore City. The facility is equipped with resources making it the center of excellence in neurosciences, transplantation, cancer, and gastroenterology. The facility bears advanced research and cutting-edge technologies thereby making the facility known nationally for its medical excellence and leadership.

MedStar Union Memorial Hospital. This healthcare facility is located in northeast Baltimore City. It is renowned in the region as a specialty and teaching hospital. It is also well known as The Curtis National Hand Center, cardiac care, and orthopedics. It was the first hospital-based sports medicine program countrywide. The hospitals facilities enable it to offer inpatient and outpatient services such as diabetes & endocrine center, general surgery, oncology, thoracic surgery, and vascular surgery (MedStar Health, 2014).

Human resources. Collectively MedStar Health has 31,000 personnel engaged as associates, residents, and fellows. The healthcare facilities have over 8700 nurses and 1100 residents and fellows. Within the organization, there are 4700 affiliated physician and 1800 employed physicians (MedStar, 2015). Within MedStar Health is the Medical Group that is a clinical and operation cornerstone of the MedStar Distributed Care Delivery Network.  The group is one of the largest medical groups in the country. This group includes 3,448 providers where 2389 are employed physicians and 1059 are advanced practice clinicians. These providers are equally apportioned to offer medical, surgical, and primary care. The program has more than 110 residents and fellows. There are 85 residency and fellowship programs supported by 1600 MedStar provider teaching faculty (MedStar Medical Group, 2017). The medical group has around 8,000 non-provider associates. The providers offer their services in more than 280 sites of care including hospital-based, telehealth, home care, and ambulatory services. Within the system at MedStar Health, there are more than 300 providers who are engaged in the governance of the medical group. There are over 400 physicians engaged in research (MedStar Medical Group, 2017).

Technological resources. MedStar health joined the only four founding partners in the technological start-up hub in 2014. This move was in response to the strategic move in a quest to look out for a new, faster, and innovative response to most challenges facing most American hospitals (MedStar Health, 2014). This strategic move is bound to cause a transformation in the nation’s healthcare system. The technological advancements within MedStar Health are spearheaded by the MedStar Institute for Innovation which works in collaboration with Cleveland Clinic. This led to the development of advanced patient care through inter-institutional collaboration, technological development, and commercialization.

The technological journey by which MedStar Inventor Services and Global Healthcare Innovations Alliance uses to transform great ideas into successful technological products involves market analysis, intellectual property protection, development of the product, and licensing. One of the latest technological products by the organization is the Invent Diaphragm Assist Device (DAD) which was conceptualized by William Krimsky, the Director in charge of Interventional Pulmonology at the MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center (MedStar Health, 2014). This device is an implantable ventilator meant to be used by patients with pulmonary failure to assist them live independently. The advancement of this technological tool is meant to revolutionize the care of patients suffering from advanced lung and neuromuscular ailments. 

Leadership and Governance

MedStar Health is governed by seventeen directors. The Board of directors for MedStar Health Include Rosie Allen Herring who is the President and Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Buzzelli – the Vice chairman, Wiliam Couper, James D’Ota, March Duber, Mark T Jensen, Christopher Kalhorn, Robert Loker, Vincent  Martorana, William Oetgen, Robert Ourisman, William Roberts, Kenneth Samet, Allen Taylor, Sara Watkins, and Togo, D. West (MedStar, 2015).

The corporate executives include Kenneth Samet who is the president and CEO, Michel Curran serving as executive vice president and Chief Administrative Officer, M. Joy Drass who is an Executive vice president and the Chief Operating Officer, and Stephen Evans who serves as an Executive Vice President, Medical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer. Oliver Johnson is an Executive vice President and the General Counsel, Kevin Kowalski is a senior vice president in charge of Marketing and Strategy. Maureen McCausaland is the Chief Nursing Officer, Susan nelson acts as an Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Eric Wagner, serves as an executive Vice President in charge of Insurance and Diversified Operation, while Loretta Young is a Senior Vice President and the Chief Human Resources Officer (MedStar, 2015).

There are other leaders such as entity presidents who are in charge of running operations in specific facilities. Others include the corporate and operational leadership tasked with handling specific business processes in their respective facilities (MedStar, 2015).

MedStar Health operates a Collaborative Governance Model that provides unprecedented chance for collaboration among nursing colleagues. The nurses in this organization are all focused on providing quality and effective care to patients. Their practice is anchored on evidence-based practice. The governance structure instituted at MedStar health offers a great opportunity for professional nurses to enhance the quality of practice of nursing at the facility. The nursing fraternity at MedStar is governed using a collaborative governance model. This is comprised of seven professional councils that brings attention on different nursing roles from all over the organization such as clinical nurses, educators, informatics team, nurse leaders and researchers. The nurses in the organization are encouraged to engage with the council that best represents their roles and tasks. This pooling of expertise and talent of the nursing department has been essential in raising the level of nursing practice across the organization.

The seven nursing councils under this governance include Nursing Practice Council tasked with coming up with, reviewing, and offering updates in the standards in nursing practice and making sure that consistent evidence-based practice is implemented. The Nursing Informatics Council is charged with the task of providing a link between the bedside clinician and electronic health records. The Nursing Research Council comes up with an evidence-based practice frameworks and offers guidelines for their implementation. The Nursing Product Evaluation and Standardization Council is responsible for defining and streamlining the evidence-based approach and making a decision on products that are cost-effective and capable of producing acceptable results. The Nursing Professional Development Council is supposed to identify system-level priorities for professional advancements by all nurses. Nursing Quality and Safety is tasked with the role of measuring the effectiveness of programs implemented to ensure that continuous improvement. Nursing Patient and Family Education Council is in charge of coming up with and upgrading the system-level patient and family education (Medstar Health, 2017).

At MedStar Health, commitment to improving leadership and governance in the healthcare sector is evident in the administrative residency programs. Through its one-year residencies, MedStar Health has three unique courses that offers deeper insight into the management of regional non-profit making and integrated healthcare delivery system. These include; MedStar Ambulatory Services Residency, MedStar Corporate Administrative Residency and MedStar Washington Hospital Center Administrative Residency (MedStar Health, 2015).

Resource Based Theory

The vision of MedStar of being the trusted leader in providing care for people and advancing health is not a simple task to achieve. Constraints such as financial pressures, increasing consumer demand and workforce shortages are bound to arise. Despite these challenges, five of the MedStar’s have been ranked among the best facilities in the country. To achieve this, MedStar makes use of its many resources, among them human resources.  The organization carries out employee survey and this is an important driver for the organization’s high performance. Through the employee engagement sessions, MedStar acquires important data in employee attitudes (Minehan, 2008). It is also an opportunity for employees to better understand and increase a connection to the organization.

To carry out this survey, a cross-system task force approach is used and provides a model for other initiatives within the system such as increasing patient satisfaction. The management highly values employee feedback just like other success metrics. Another important aspect of MedStar Health employee engagement is that the results are put into comprehensive action plan with a team assigned specific roles to execute. This encourages employees to participate in the process. The process is also headed by senior management with a task force that meets monthly for every survey cycle. The employee’s contribution is then linked to the strategic and operating plans thereby highlighting the importance of the exercise to employees. The success of process is also dependent on the presence of an inclusive team that is able to satisfactorily address the different issues raised by the employees from different departments. By having this process of employee engagement, employees are meant to realize that it is their chance to improve their workplace (Minehan, 2008).

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

The diversified services offered by MedStar gives it a wider outreach in the community.  These include hospitals, urgent care and ambulatory care facilities, and physician officers. The organization, through its facilities, has an extensive network that helps it provide high quality and advanced care. This has helped it attain market share leadership. It is estimated that 1 in every 5 patients in the regions get their healthcare services from a MedStar Health facility. MedStar has a market share of over 19.6% ahead of John Hopkins Health System whose market share is 10.1% (Tori, 2013).

Adoption of a Community Health Needs Assessment Model (CHNA) helps the organization is its journey of advancing health and partnering with other stakeholders to achieve community health improvement. MedStar Health understands that with healthier individuals, there will be healthier families and communities. Community health is affected by different variables such as physical, social, and economic factors. Through its program of CHNA, it positions itself in meeting the needs of the underserved communities in the regions where they offer their services. The strategy provides a comprehensive road map for improvement of health outcomes for those affected by disease. It also helps it come up with a plan for covering community health programs across the ten affiliated hospitals (MedStar Health, 2015). By including the key stakeholders such as local residents, community partners, and stakeholders. It strengthens the program by bringing on board community activists, residents, faith-based leaders, hospitals representatives, public health leaders and other key stakeholders. The community partnership helps the organization acquire community health data which can be compiled, analyzed and used to make strategic decisions (MedStar Health, 2015).  

Another source of strength to MedStar Health is the emphasis laid on innovation. This is enhanced through MedStar Institute for Innovation that was established in 2009. This facility plays a critical role as a catalyst and seed crystal to bring innovation across the entire MedStar Health Organization. The establishment of this facility was based on the realization that the need to achieve greatness in a dynamic and challenging healthcare required innovative approach, the number of daily trumps needed to be dealt with a force and effort, and within the organization there was a lot of untapped and under tapped creative and intellectual resources that could be capitalized on. This helped the organization run a facility with an aim of helping MedStar become an innovation organization that thought differently (Tori, 2013).

Weakness

One of the weakness at MedStar health is related to the security of its electronic system. The electronic system has proved to have vulnerabilities that were recently exploited by hackers who gained access to the organization’s systems. MedStar Health, like other health care facilities in the United States resolved to use the digital technology after the move by the federal government to fund the adoption of information technology in health facilities. The priority was put into having a running system with less focus being given to the security technologies. This made the hospital vulnerable to a hacker who poses a risk to patient patient data and their privacy. The hospital focused on its main mission of offering quality healthcare with less focus on protection of data (Yaraghi, 2016).

Learning change

One of the main learning opportunity for MedStar health has been on electronic medical records. The move to adopt health information technology was initiated by the federal government. The benefits of the electronic medical records include helping patients avoid unnecessary tests. The availability of medical information enable making of better decisions. This, however, exposed the health care facilities to risk of cyber-attacks. MedStar Health, for example, has had an attack launched on its computer networks in MedStar Health hospitals. During the attack, the hackers encrypted the hospital data which created issues for the staff members, patients, and family member such as delays in service and confusion in treatment. Some cancer patients had to be delayed for their radiotherapy session for a few days (Duncan & McDaniels, 2016).

The kind of attack that was carried against the MedStar systems is called Samsam and takes advantage of the weaknesses in a specific software. This poses a danger as it could easily be introduced in the network and spreads fast. The defense against this includes installing updates that fix the weakness. To deal with this, MedStar decided to have everything offline. This caused the doctors to fall back to the older methods of moving information. Paper records piled on desks, fax machines as well as pagers were put into use. The attack served as a great learning opportunity for MedStar health and the entire Medical fraternity of the risks they faced with electronic health records. This good intentioned advancements in operation can be the gateway for the downfall of an organization (Duncan & McDaniels, 2016).

MedStar Health runs a research facility, MedStar Health Research Institute that gets NIH and federal funding to expand its tentacles in advancing health. This research institute is crucial to the clinical services offered in MedStar hospitals. The institute offers a learning opportunity on areas such as basic bench studies to community-wide initiatives. Through the research institute, more than 500 peer-reviewed publications have been produced. One learning opportunity through the research was the NIH sponsored GRADE study whose main goal was to carry out a comparison on the effectiveness of the common available glucose-reduction medication used together with the front-line drug. The result from such a study helps the organization streamline its treatment option to respond to evidence-based practice.

To achieve their focus on putting the patient first, MedStar Health have diversified research networks that helps it sharpen its learning capability thereby introducing change to the organization. The facility has a team of qualified scientists and investigators carrying out cutting edge research. The research networks cover specifics in the broad areas of cardiovascular, general healthcare services, cancer, medical and surgical, neuroscience and rehab, and practice-based research networks. Through research, the healthcare facility is able to advance scientific understanding and initiate better and more effective treatment methods. This continuous learning opportunity helps the organization make positive contributions to healing work carried out with the system and in the community they intend to serve.

At MedStar Health, learning opportunities from research activities are highly encouraged. There is a multidisciplinary core service function established to offer support to researchers. The researchers are able to access the Scientific Center where projects in need of a multidisciplinary effort are reviewed by a Scientific Advisory Panel that offers guidance on how to advance the research projects (MedStar Health, 2015).

Conclusion and Recommendation

As discussed above, MedStar Health is a healthcare facility that operates in Maryland and Washington D.C. The vision of this health facility states that it aims to be a trusted leader in caring for people and advancing health. Its mission requires is to serve the patients by taking care of them and assisting in the uplifting of the health conditions of the health facility. It clear that at MedStar Health, the patient is put first. Other values include integrity, respect, professionalism and dignity, innovation, and teamwork. Using the vision, mission, and values, the personnel at MedStar health are guided on conducting themselves in a manner that will best achieve the organizational goals.

MedStar Health experienced difficulties in competition in the industry through an integrated, comprehensive, medical service, and this prompted it to move to a new strategy on low cost preventive care. The strategic plan aimed at putting a futuristic perspective to the organization and setting long-term goals in increasing revenue and profits and at the same time ensuring a reduction in the medial costs. To achieve the strategy, MedStar Health’s objectives includes diversifying operations to include the general-population health insurance and expand into the ambulatory care. The organization has also exploited new opportunities either through new categories of clients and coming up with innovative ways of serving the existing ones. To attain these objectives, MedStar Health, has three unique business portfolios with each structure handling a specific business objective and with a different timeframe. These portfolios include the future state portfolio, innovative portfolio, and investment portfolio.

MedStar Health has a competitive health accruing from its strategy to invest in the population health management approach. This saw the organization expand from being a health care provider to offering healthcare insurance as well. The health care facility anticipated that with this, they would benefit by having reduced costs, utilization of care, and upgrading the quality of care offered. Another source of competitive advantage for the organization is accrued from having shared administrative and physician leadership. This is the case at MedStar Good Samaritan and MedStar Union Memorial Hospitals in Baltimore that have unified efficiency and excellence by integrating the administrative managers and having them managed by a single president.

MedStar Health is the largest healthcare provider in Maryland and Washington D.C. with 10 hospitals, a research institute, and diversified health-based organizations. The organization also has the largest graduate medical education programs that caters for over 1000 medical trainees annual. It is among the region’s largest employer with over 30,000 associates and 6000 affiliated physicians. The resources are channeled towards the realization of the philosophy on Patient first through care, compassion, and clinical excellence.

Recommendations

It has been observed that the healthcare delivery system in the US needs to readjust and incorporate new changes that fit the new healthcare law that is causing a shift towards value-based purchasing. This is structured in a manner that Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are linked to the quality of services offered. This calls for improvement in the clinical processes and attainment of high quality patient satisfaction. This can be enhanced through employee’s engagement in key strategic decision to ensure their commitment and dedication. MedStar Health should continue working to improve the level of employee engagement. This can be achieved by diagnosing issues and specific drivers for different groups within the system. These drivers should then be converted into set of actions and objectives that are realistic, meaningful and sustainable. MedStar need to continue putting focus on ensuring the healthcare delivery system has well experienced supervisors working to ensure that all employees are focused on driving the organization in the same direction and that they are responsible and accountable for their actions (Sherwood, 2013).

MedStar should continue to offer support to patients by availing relevant information to help them make informed decisions in matters such as making a choice of hospital and service. The information to be availed should address the specific aspect of services. There should be an option to carry out a comparison with other hospitals within the country. The quality of care aspects include safety, effectiveness, efficiency, equitability, and patient-orientation and time effectiveness. The organization should seek to gain a feedback on the choice that the patients makes to help them  understand the strengths they can capitalize on as well as areas in need of improvement.

MedStar Health needs to establish an entire specialized IT team meant to carry out continuous surveillance of its IT network in an effort to prevent cyber-attacks. In the past, the issue of information security technology has been sidelined and is not given much attention. The incident of hacking the system must have been a wakeup call for the organization to be vigilant and integrate information and security technologies as integral components of modern medical care. Putting patients first also involves protecting their data and privacy. This calls for the organization prioritizing IT and security technologies and allocating enough resources to deal with vulnerabilities on privacy breaches.

References

Duncan, I., & McDaniels, A. (n.d.). MedStar Hack Shows Risks That Come with Electronic Health Records. The Baltimore Sun.

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