Note: This is part of a project for 11 weeks please see the overview of it to get a good idea about the assignment. Also, please see the rubric and lesson content for additional information to complet

Week 2-Assignment, Rubric, & Lesson Content

Assignment:

Note: This is part of a project for 11 weeks please see the overview of it to get a good idea about the assignment. Also, please see the rubric and lesson content for additional information to complete the assignment.

As part of your work as Project Manager on the strategic analysis for the potential business operation standardization project, you will be developing a way to assess the various organizations and benchmark their performance in the areas that were highlighted as part of the current issues facing the organization.

Write a 1-2 page paper analyzing how you will structure and conduct the organizational assessments so that you can benchmark the performance between sites in at least two of the areas where there are issues currently impacting the organization (see list below). Provide examples of what the goals of the organizational assessment analysis would be and what benchmarking process you will recommend implementing. Provide examples to support your findings.

Issues impacting the organization:

• Financial challenges - Not all sites are performing as well as expected

• Patient safety and quality - Sites have different operating procedures

• Healthcare reform implementation - Sites are in different phases of this process depending on when they started and available resources

• Governmental mandates - Sites are interpreting mandates differently and responding based on their interpretations

• Care for the uninsured - Several sites are struggling financially providing care for large populations of uninsured patients

• Patient satisfaction - There is no standard way to measure and track patient satisfaction across all sites

• Physician-hospital relations - Sites vary in the effectiveness of these relationships

• Technology - Sites run different technology systems which are not integrated and some sites are much more technologically advanced than others

• Population health management - Each site is conducting this differently and there is no way to easily evaluate data across the system.

• Personnel shortages - There is no easy way to share resources between sites to address personnel shortages and make sure there are adequate numbers of cross trained employees.

• Creating an accountable care organization - Sites vary in their willingness and bandwidth to make this transition.

You must reference at least two research sources (Wikipedia is not an acceptable research source) in your paper, and include appropriate APA citations for those sources. For more information about APA, visit the Online Library which is available through the Resources tab.

Save your assignment as a Microsoft Word document.

Rubric:

Lesson Content:

Project Overview

Throughout the course you will be studying and practicing how to analyze, evaluate, and create various components of an organization’s strategic management function. Your weekly assignments will provide you an opportunity to work with various components of developing and implementing strategy and strategic initiatives for an organization.
It is important to note that these activities cannot be done without taking into consideration the human aspect of an organization. Developing an organization’s strategy is a complex process that involves the right people needed to be involved in the design and finding the right people to communicate and work with employees to make sure the strategy becomes engrained in people’s day-to-day work so the implementation is successful.
To simulate a realistic strategic planning environment, we want to provide you the opportunity to both develop strategic planning components and evaluate the people aspect of this process. Your discussion question and weekly assignments will be focused on strategic management topics and deliverables. This course project will provide you the opportunity to focus on the human resource aspect of this process.

The information needed to complete this project will not directly come from the course text, but instead will be drawn from prior learning in your other courses, your experience, research, and insights about strategic planning. Use the following scenario as context for completing the project deliverables. Feel free to make assumptions if there is information missing that would help you better explain or provide an example for what you are submitting.

Scenario

You are the Project Manager in a large healthcare facility for Be Well Health System. The organization consists of 3 hospitals and 15 clinic/specialty facilities that were acquired over the past 10 years as part of the company’s growth strategy. While the sites are part of the Be Well Health System, many operate independently as they did before the acquisitions.

This strategy has worked well for the organization. Given the changing environment of the healthcare industry, Be Well’s executive team wants to make sure the organization is not growing too fast or stretching their resources too thin and impacting patient care or service. They know other organizations are working to consolidate and standardize their business operations and realize they will need to do the same to remain competitive.

The executive team would like to put together a strategic workgroup with representatives and key stakeholders from all the sites to start exploring how a consolidated organization might look and function successfully for all the sites. You know the group will have a lot of work to do, and in order to be successful, it is important that the right team of people is selected for the workgroup.

You have been asked to provide the group with information about how to identify the skills needed for this new workgroup, build the team, and develop staff so they are successful. You also know that not everyone understand the differences between the principles of management and strategic management, so you plan to start by presenting that information to the group.

Due Date

Your final project is due in Module 11 and consists of the parts listed below. There will be individual assignments along the way that will help you develop your formal project deliverables. The module and project deliverable is noted in the timeline below.

Timeline

Requirements

Your final project submission will be a collective process of your previous project pieces of part I, II, III, IV, and V. This is the time you will compile your completed and graded parts to make changes and improvements for your final project submission. This final submission will demonstrate your ability to apply your learning in strategic leadership, organizational leadership, principles of management, and communication through identification of problem solving and decision making.

Your project should be 7-10 pages in length, not including references. Make sure your final submission includes a title page and references along with in-text citations. You also must have a minimum of 5 references brought in from your project parts.

Introduction to Organizational Processes

It is important that managers use an approach to the organizational process by applying strategic thinking. The organizational processes that managers use include situational analysis, strategy formulation, and planning the strategy implementation. These aid the organization in understanding the system of competitive behavior and the impact of a strategy. That is, they aid in developing the understanding, ability, and willingness to act to best position the organization within the external environment and implement a strategy that will help to assure success. Below are some definitions.

Situational Analysis - the interaction and results of external analysis, internal analysis, and statement of vision, mission, values, and goals. It forms the basis for the development of strategy and drives the strategy.

Strategy Formulation - answers the questions: "What business are we in?" "What business should we be in?" "How are we going to compete?" Strategy formulation consists of two interrelated activities:

1. Development of vision, mission, values and strategic goals (directional strategies) which set the broadest direction for the organization, and

2. Development of the adaptive, market entry, and competitive strategies, and the writing of the strategic plan.

Planning the Implementation - development of specific activities to carry out value-adding service delivery and support strategies. Service delivery strategies include pre-service, point of service, and after-service strategies. Support areas include culture, structure, and strategic resources. Action plans are developed for each organizational unit and are made up of objectives, activities to achieve the objectives, timelines, and budgets as well as controls to monitor and modify the objectives based on accomplishments.

Introduction to Principles of Strategic Management and Thinking

One thing we know for sure: change is constant within most organizations and healthcare is no different. In this day and age with rising costs all around us, we ask "is this the worst of the worst for the healthcare sector and how does one keep up with all the changes?" It is generally known that the United States has one of the most advanced health care systems in the world, but with that success brings continual and constant change at a very rapid pace. The changes require management and leaders to have the ability to use strategic thinking in managing and monitoring organizations through change.

Health care leaders will have to cope with change and position their organizations to take advantage of emerging opportunities while avoiding external threats. Strategic management has become a major force guiding the management of all types of contemporary organizations. Strategic management will provide a basic understanding of how and why an organization survives and grows. To do this one must understand how to think strategically and apply that to the correct setting for the scope of any given project.

The table below helps prepare us for strategic thinking and indicates who should be the one to do the thinking. Is it individual, group, or at an organizational level?