Carson Ralphs
5 Trends in Healthcare Administration:
Healthcare Professional spoken with: Todd Hendricks,
Director of Service Excellence at Intermountain Healthcare.
Lack of Personal Accountability for healthy lifestyle: One
of the main problems threatening the public health of the people is that they
haven’t been taking personal responsibility for their own health. It is very
easy to sit back, and lead a sedentary lifestyle. However, this lifestyle leads
to chronic disease. This chronic disease becomes very costly, both to the
individuals and their families of the afflicted, and everyone else who
contributes to Medicare and Medicaid.
One way to remedy this is to change insurance premiums and costs due to
your lifestyle, how much you exercise, where you eat, level of obesity, etc.
People diagnosing problems, without looking to provide
solutions: Another issue in the Healthcare Administration field is that of
people pointing fingers, shifting the blame and responsibility off of
themselves. This results in a lot of problems becoming created, and not very
many solutions being found. It can be very easy to point out what is wrong in
the Healthcare field, especially now. What this field needs is not someone who
will just identify the problems, but someone who will take responsibility to
help solve the problems. Leaders who will seek to create solutions are the ones
who will change Healthcare for the better.
Lack of communication between hospital staff and patients:
When patients and doctors don’t communicate well, it increases patient’s
anxiety. The patients are not as able to be as responsible for their own care,
or carry out the doctor’s orders, if they don’t understand what is expected of
them, or what their problem may be. One of the major issues facing healthcare
today is that sometimes doctors and hospital staff aren’t clear or explanatory
in what they do. With many unfamiliar words and terms, the hospital and the
care it provides can be very confusing. As doctors and hospital staff learn to
communicate more effectively through training and coaching, the patient’s
anxiety will decrease, and their perception of care will increase.
Ineffective use of time by hospital staff: This is an issue
that plagues most fields of labor, but rarely can it have more devastating
effects than in healthcare. Nurses, doctors, and technicians can be related to
other employees of other companies, in the fact that they have the tendency to
shirk as well. Some common distractions that affect hospital staff include
inappropriate use of internet and computer privileges. To remedy this, several
healthcare systems have shut off employee access to sites such as Facebook, and
Amazon.com, so as to lessen the distractions. While this restriction may be met
with resistance from staff, it will prove to be very beneficial to both
patients and staff as time is used more effectively by everyone involved in the
care provided.
Patients having negative experiences in local hospitals: The
hospital is an interesting place, with unique expectations. It is one of the
few places where people go in to receive a service, and expect a perfect
outcome, every time. The hospital can be a very stressful place to work, with
such incredibly, almost unrealistically high expectations. Because mistakes
happen, and humans aren’t perfect, sometimes patients can have negative
experiences in their hospital stay. In order to help resolve this, hospitals
can improve their operations and alter the checks and balances, so as to ensure
that everyone is given the best care possible.
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