Conducting an Environmental Analysis

Conducting an Environmental Analysis

Health Services Admin HAS 599

Conducting an Environmental Analysis

The Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) is a facility that is located in the Carolina areas and looking to expand further South Georgia mainly. Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) has many affiliates within the local area and the surrounding counties so that we can provide affordable and quality service for our patients. When there is a change in the healthcare system, in the reimbursement, with insurance policies it affects every organization that is connected to you. Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) has been faced with a challenge that we have to decline reimbursements from insurance providers, at the same time having to increase in the needs of our patients due to the change in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. With the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act the legislation amended a law that expanded the Medicaid Program to cover more people with low income, gave more rights and the protections to make health coverage fairer and easy to understand. At the same time, Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) had to take a hit by declining reimbursements from insurance providers.

All of the political principles are impacting the nature of healthcare, and the state legislators are battling federal regulators for the responsibilities and what healthcare organizations should and should not do. With all this change around Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) this is causing the leaders along with administrator considering external environmental factors, internal factors that may eventually afflict the organization, this will also affect the organizations’ competitive strategy. With all that will affect the organization, we as the leaders will develop a strategy that will help with competition and enforce Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) the organizations’ strategic plan which is already in place.

Determine two (2) specific forces in the external environment that will have the most impact on your organization. Provide a rationale for your decision.

As the administrator of the Teach and Care Health Center come tremendous obligations and the duties in checking out the organizations positions in an effort to determine organizations ability to continue to give quality care and stay financially stable when challenges arise. To make sure that Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) remain stable and work towards the goals of the company is to complete an environmental analysis. Environmental analysis plays a very important role in Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) plans because it (Ginter, Duncan, & Swayne 2013):

“External environmental analysis attempts to identify, aggregate, and interpret environmental issues as well as provide information for the analysis of the internal environment and the development of the directional strategies (Ginter, et al., p.41).” The environmental influences show all the uniqueness of organizations outer walls that may affect any upgrades in the facility. Organizations are always looking for ways to promote, accommodate and to control the positive maintaining positive stand when it involves the environment; which is very critical for its endurance. Now as the administrator of Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC), the external environmental force that needs to be addressed first is the opposition that may come up. With opposition comes competition and it will increase, this will put the pressure on the team to take the initiative to be proactive and grip the change even the more as the competition comes.

1. Identifies and analyze current important issues and changes that will affect Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC)
2. It detects and analyze early or weak signals of emerging issues and changes that will affect Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC)
3. To speculate on the likely future issues and changes that will have significant impact Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC)
4. To classify and order issues and changes generated by outside organizations
5. To provide organized information for the development of Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) internal analysis, mission, vision, goals, values, strategy
6. To foster further strategic, thinking throughout the organization (pp.43-44).

The health industry is a very active situation. The healthcare industry is already facing challenges, as the administrator, and the other leaders will have to get together put our thoughts and strategies together to meet those challenges. Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) will have to continue to be head first and head strong for our competition, because we know that the competition will impact the organization. There are several hospitals and other care facilities that will be in the area that will offer some of the same services that Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) will offer. With so many other healthcare organizations around the same area this is will add to the competition, location will be a part of the competition. Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) being in Columbia, SC and other surrounding towns such as Lexington, Sumter, Irmo, Lugoof, it so many. Along with the surrounding towns, they all have hospitals, small clinics, they are all revamping, rebuilding, reconstructing since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Seeing the surrounding counties as the administrator this will definitely push the team to work towards bettering the facility and focusing on the quality care of the people.

Another external environmental force that will cause an undeviating blow on the organization is the Affordable Care Act market place. So many organizations are pulling away from the marketplace, and this is not good for many of the healthcare industries. Having Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) launching out further south this may cause many organizations to only be able to accept certain insurances, and it may only be Anthem Blue for some areas or just Anthem. In South Carolina, Anthem is actually one of our contracted insurance companies, and this could and very well increase in patient demand. Then there is Humana they decided all together that they will no longer offer individual medical plans in 2018, because they ran into so many challenges, they are just cutting their lose. Being that we are contracted through Anthem Blue, and Anthem the patient demand will increase.

Determine two (2) specific internal factors that the organization’s leaders need to consider in preparing for the future of health care and the future of the organization. Provide a rationale for your decision.

When dealing with the internal factors that we need to consider for the future of healthcare and for Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) there are some internal questions we need to evaluate and ask ourselves. This goes back to looking into our vision, the mission statement for the organization. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has caused the leaders of The Teach and Care Health Center, asking the what when how and whys, and how all our questions are going to get answered and once they are answered will it influence the decisions of the leaders and will the answers affect the decisions, the attitude of the employees. With getting a better understanding of our strategic plan, we will execute a SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats) analysis. The SWOT is relevant to both external and internal.

Determining the strengths within The Teach and Care Health Center using the SWOT what sets us apart is that we have many facilities with excellent quality care, in all of our locations with various physicians along with support services for our physicians. The Teach and Care Center in each location we have stability, within our leaders, and the works, and that is very important in any organization when there is consistency within the organization. When leadership has stability this looks good to the employees, this gives the employee on and off-site the assurance that we can and will make it through any challenge. Also having a leader that has been through all of the ups and downs through all of the changes that have within the healthcare industry is very hopeful.

Another internal factor is being that we have all these diverse physicians in all locations, making sure that they are capable of transitioning to multiple areas in the Teach and Care Health Center. This area in our facilities that we will definitely consider preparing for in our new locations and this will be one of our plans to perfect in the already established locations. Diversity is essential in the healthcare industry. Being able to train, instruct, and reach other physicians and being able to educate other providers, and being able to assist our patients making them feel comfortable and at ease with our healthcare providers. Communications amongst the staff, managers and our patients are also very important. At times there will be staff members and patients with different cultural backgrounds, and being able to break the language barrier which is a problem in healthcare would benefit the organization.

Discuss the impact of both the identified internal and external forces on the organization’s ability to develop a competitive strategy.

For Teach and Care Health Center (TCHC) the competitive strategy, this doesn’t necessarily establish a plan, because the plan is set up for the organization to overcome the competition and to help cut down on the effects of the external threats we may have. “Competitive strategy is derived from taking an organization’s strengths and weaknesses and determines whether each individual activity could or could not be used as a competitive advantage (Ginter, Duncan, & Swayne, 2013).” After reviewing the internal and external forces that will affect our organization competitive strategy, the first thing noted we have to look at the competition that is within the same demographic and region of our facilities and how they have impact Teach and Care Health Center. In that region organization that does not have any financial stability is where the competition is being hit the hardest, and because we have been established longer than some of the other healthcare facilities and this is actually an area where Teach and Care Health Center can benefit from. While Teach and Care Health Center have already been scouting Georgia we have considered the external factors in that area and in our South Carolina surrounding counties, we used the external forces to assist with our decision to expand. With the leaders within the organization remaining faithful and showing that when there are hard times they remain stable, this is the internal factor that Teach and Care Health Center used to push through the competitive market, and did not overwork, or burn out the organization during the expansions.

Recommend one (1) strategy that involves the organization’s managers in implementing and maintaining the momentum of the strategic plan.

It is very important when the organization’s managers and the leaders put into practice and keep the drive the strategic plan that they have set for the organization, this will cause the organization to maintain successful and profitable and not lack in quality care. Being the leader sometimes you have to go back and revise your plan, keeping the plan before you, is keeping the plan active. As the Administrator, after going back and revising the plan using the best results to measure the organization’s development, establish a balanced scorecard that provides metrics in the areas of performance, quality, compliance, and value. The key point behind establishing a knowledge management balanced scorecard is that it provides valuable insight into what’s working and what’s not. You can then take the necessary actions to mitigate fulfillment, performance, quality, and value gaps, thus improving the overall efficacy of the knowledge management program (Simmons, 2013).”

Reference

Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L. E. (2013). Strategic management of health care organizations (7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Humana’s Decision on Individual Medical Plans in 2018. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.humana.com/individual-and-family-support/tools/aca

ECareers, H. (2018, April 12). Does Healthcare Have a Diversity Problem? Retrieved from https://www.healthecareers.com/article/healthcare-news/does-healthcare-have-a-diversity-problem

8 Steps to Implementing a Knowledge Management Program at Your Organization. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://focus.forsythe.com/articles/281/8-Steps-to-Implementing-a-Knowledge-Management-Program-at-Your-Organization