Healthcare Changes Resistors Essay
Within the health care sector, various forces have hindered the adoption of change initiatives. Funding serves as the major issue hindering adoption of a change in care institutions. For example, two financial challenges emerge when incorporating innovation in the health care setting. The process of financing the development of innovation and identifying the parties that would pay for the services or products is a challenging issue. Most of the financing initiatives take a considerable amount of time, such as the duration needed to approve new therapies or drugs by the FDA (AFSCME, 2017). Venture capitalists are supporting IT startups since they deem them as capable of getting their money in a period of between two and three years. Healthcare Changes Resistors Essay. In the case of biotech investors, they might wait for over ten years before knowing whether the product they introduced was approved for use. A different issue revolves around where traditional capital sources are not accustomed to the health care sector. In this sense, challenges emerge when it comes to finding investors who are capable of offering guidance to innovators (Brook, 2017).
Regulations by the government also pose challenges in the health care sector. Even though public policy can assist in change initiatives, it also hinders them. For instance, the recent legislation across the U.S. instituted a suspension concerning establishing new specialty hospitals that target particular surgical procedures (Herzlinger, 2006). Therefore, it is essential for health care institutions to understand that broader regulation networks can affect their change initiatives based on the ways in which the rules are modified, enacted, or applied. Officials agree that politicians or the public would punish them for under-regulating, as opposed to tightening the process of approval, irrespective of whether doing so leads to delayed change processes (Austin, at al., 2016). Organizations that introduce new ideas also need to realize that regulators might interpret ambiguous rules tightly, hence hindering their focus on innovation.
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Technology is also a major force that is hindering change initiatives in health care institutions. With the evolution of medical technology, it is essential to understand how to invest or adopt it. In case medical facilities move too fast, the infrastructure they require to support innovation might not be in place yet. If they wait too long, the time they needed to realize competitive advantage might have passed. Therefore, health care institutions are forced to deal with the rivalry that prevails within each technology as well as in distinct techniques. Hence, technology also poses challenges on implementing ideal change initiatives within health care settings (AFSCME, 2017).
The increasing engagement and empowerment of customers in the healthcare setting presents challenges on change adoption in care facilities. For instance, sick individuals, as well as their families, join institutions, including American Cancer Society, which lobbies for research finances. Moreover, interest groups, especially the elderly seek increased funding to cater for health care needs via recognized institutions, such as AARP. The individuals suffering from different illnesses impose pressure on care providers to access diagnostics, drugs, devices, and services they perceive as effective (AFSCME, 2017). Here, medical institutions encounter a challenge in instituting changes that can deal with such populations. Healthcare Changes Resistors Essay.
Also, patients spend considerable amounts of their finances on health care. For example, they spend around $40 billion on medications, such as acupuncture, which are perceived as complementary (AFSCME, 2017). Most traditional medical practitioners understand the medications as being of doubtful value. With the information that the customers gather from the Internet, they end up disagreeing with the medical advice they perceive as misleading. They might end up discarding drugs that their doctors prescribe. Any firm that leverages or recognizes the growing empowerment sense among consumers might end up boosting change innovation. However, most of the present institutions do not accept the growing cases of consumer empowerment. These hinder them from adopting change initiatives that would rhyme with the preferences and needs of their customers concerning health care (Suchman et al., 2011).
Action Plans: Eradicating Resistance to Change
For medical institutions to facilitate change adoption, they can follow several strategies. Exercising focus toward customers is a major way of overcoming change resistance in the health care sector. Through embarking on innovations, medical institutions would manage to offer services in more efficient, convenient, and cheaper ways. Healthcare customers today are increasingly empowered and time-stressed. Health care systems need to introduce health plans that involve their clients during the process of delivering care. In this sense, customers gain increased control toward their spending on personal care. A health plan can also lay emphasis on user-friendliness since patients are just like other consumers. They anticipate receiving good products and services as well as ease of use (Herzlinger, 2006). As such, institutions should introduce measures that have the capacity of reducing wait times. Such practices would prevent patients from shifting between health care facilities in search of treatment.
Effective adoption of technology would also play a vital role in addressing the issue of change resistance in the health care sector. New diagnostic methods, drugs, medical devices, and systems for delivering drugs provide patients with hope for improved treatment. Care also becomes less disruptive, costly, and painful (Arbuckle, 2012). For instance, the introduction of implanted sensors would assist patients in monitoring their illnesses in a more efficient manner. Investing in IT would also facilitate in connecting diverse information sources in the health care sector hence boost quality and reduce costs significantly. They can keep different providers informed concerning the condition of the patient, thus reduce omission errors. These kinds of initiatives would assist in boosting change initiatives within the health care industry considerably (Arbuckle, 2012).
Additionally, since the health care sector is still highly fragmented, organizations should focus on instituting business models that would allow them to cope with the diverse needs of patients as they arise. By instituting innovative business models, especially the ones that merge health care organizations would manage to boost efficiency, improve care, and save patients time (Brook, 2017). They can introduce several free players to serve a single institution thus create economies of scale. Healthcare Changes Resistors Essay. They can also consider bringing chronic disease treatment under one roof to make treatment more convenient and useful. Concerning the latter case, the patients attain a one-stop shopping thereby freeing the burden of having to coordinate care with various providers. These moves would encourage medical institutions to become more active and embrace the change processes (Institute of Medicine, 2011).
One of the key concerns in Health care management is management of change and health care professionals are obligated both to acquire and to maintain the expertise needed to undertake their professional tasks, and all are obligated to undertake only those tasks that are within their competence.1 Moreover, change occurs continuously around us. We may want to support it, be indifferent to it, and be passive or participate in it. The pace of change has increased dramatically.2
Managing change is about handling the complexity of the process. It is about evaluating, planning and implementing operations, tactics and strategies and making sure that the change is worthwhile and relevant.3 Managing change is a complex, dynamic and challenging process.4 It is never a choice between technological or people-oriented solutions but a combination of all.5
Effective change has been characterized as unfreezing old behaviours, introducing new ones, and re-freezing them.6–8 Change may be continuous, sporadic, occasional, or rare. Predictable change allows time for preparation, whereas unpredictable change is more difficult to respond to effectively. Since changes in healthcare occur so rapidly, they are less likely to be predictable.9
The only sustainable competitive advantage today is the ability to change, adapt, and evolve – and to do it better than the competition.10 Failure rates are associated to a number of different factors such as lack of vision and commitment from senior management, limited integration with other systems and processes in the organization, and ill-conceived implementation plans. Healthcare Changes Resistors Essay. If organizations are to experience a greater level of success in their development efforts, managers and executives need to have a better framework for thinking about change and an understanding of the key issues which accompany change management.11
Even if change is endorsed, employees want to understand why change is happening and how they will be affected. Layoffs or other organizational changes can lead to paranoia, confusion, anger and insecurities under the auspices of change.12
Promoting change is both demanding and fatiguing. Bringing about change requires the manager to challenge the precedent, and requires perseverance against the habits and norms of established behaviours. Bringing about change takes time and requires the commitment of time on the part of the manager.13 The manager must know the values that matter and focus on changing those as opposed to reacting to every invitation for change. She/he must be clear about what is important and develop responses and proactive actions accordingly.14
Organisations that employ large numbers of professionals will not perform well if they become overly bureaucratic. Steiner stated that organisations that are known to be bureaucratised and hierarchical are less flexible, less amenable to change and less likely to empower staff.15 An organisation will not get full value from its professional employees if it insists that they do only what they are told. Therefore, leaders have to learn how to manage change, rather than change manages them in order to move forward with success. Coram and Burnes argued that there is no “one best way” to manage change in an organization, and that public sector organisations need to introduce an approach to organisation change which matches their requirements and situation.16 It has to be admitted that change in management will keep happening. In addition, leaders need to understand the change process and issues that are involved with it in order to have the capability to lead and manage change and improve efforts effectively.5 They must learn to overcome obstacles and cope with the chaos that naturally exists during the complex process of change.17 Leaders should help employees and other stakeholders structure and build effective teams by developing new organizational structures and creating a shared vision that focuses on authentic employees’ output. Such inspired and informed leadership is critical and essential for organizations to be successful.
Establishing a clear vision about the direction of the change process is another key element for assuring successful change.18 Measuring and monitoring outcomes of the change process is essential for recognizing whether or not the change process has fulfilled its purposes.19 Since change is continuing to happen in organizations and associated modifications are taking place, it is important for those who are in charge of the change process to record and focus on the emerging problems due to change. This will help avoid them in the future so that the new administration system will help to manage the change in the proper and best manner. Healthcare Changes Resistors Essay.
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To conclude, there are global changes happening, which drive individual organisations to change accordingly in order to proceed ahead. These changes have created problems within organisations concerned. Solutions are required to overcome any emerging problems due to the change that are continuing to happen. And in order to keep the organisation functioning according to plan, managers and employees’ knowledge and skills should be upgraded; necessary training on the changes in technology must be provided. Individuals who are in charge of the change process should record all emerging problems and design an ultimate solution for better future of organisation. Changes in healthcare practice are welcome if they improve quality and safety, or save money. However, it is important to tailor health care delivery to the needs of the local population and create awareness programmes and clear communication between the public and organization is essential and highly required. In addition, the rate of change in healthcare is accelerating, not slowing and the powerful forces that are transforming healthcare can generate vast economic potential for those who are able to employ effective survival techniques in the short term and at the same time plan for success in the long term. To accomplish this, an organization must harness the forces driving transformation and use them to its advantage. Finally, the change in health services entails incremental improvement on existing organizational capabilities, more empowerment to the changing agents and continuous support to the changing leaders. Healthcare Changes Resistors Essay.
