Case Study: Let It Pour: My First Assignment As Executive Assistant

Critical Thinking Case Study: Let it Pour – Analysis In the reading of the case study "Let it Pour – My First Assignment as Executive Assistant", we identify several issues that are a major impact to the Faith Community Hospital, the running of the business as well as the well being of the patience. To begin with some of the hospital staff who refuses to provide certain services. Another issue is with Child Protective services threatening to file charges against the hospital for allegedly accusing the hospital of failing to provide services, despite the agreement between the hospital and the parents. On another issue, some of the staff members of the ICU are not following regulations by initiating Do Not Resuscitate directives without any family consent or written order. On another area of the hospital, the pharmacists are filling out uninsured prescriptions by accepting payment in installments, and two of the hospital counselors are treating some clients pro bono without authorization. But on the other end, some staff members refuse to serve patients unless they have prove of insurance coverage. While this follows the
hospital rules, it may negatively impact the hospital in case of patience's death and media bad coverage. Maybe one the biggest issue with a negative impact to the hospital is the increase of hospital costs when the revenue remains the same or drops at times.
By running higher costs, the hospital will face a major financial crisis. It is obvious that the costs do not change proportionally to the number of patients treated; therefore it is important to analyze the costs and see what could be reduced unless the hospital is able to increase the patient count. After identifying the major problems that the hospital is experiencing, the next steps would be to define goals and objectives, see which areas are the problem originating and why are those areas having these problems, find alternatives to fix the problems, evaluate the impact of the alternatives, implement the decision an monitor the decision for a period of time to ensure full
success. It is clear that most of the issues are staff related, so it is important to analyze the staff behavior by monitoring their performance on a daily basis. One way it could be done is to either having a senior staff member to have a supervisor role reporting back to the CEO, or hiring a professional consulting company that will be able to work closely with the staff members who are creating the issues. The one downside about the last resource would be that it may create more problems among the staff when they see strangers working among them. If signs of negligence, laziness and carelessness our found in the staff members during the monitoring period, then such members should be advised of the issues and retrained if necessary. Each member is valuable to the hospital but can also hurt the hospital if the performance is poor or if the rules are not followed. In the issues presented at the beginning of the paper, it is noticeable that not only one, but several of the hospital department are having issues, and this will cause a negative publicity to the hospital, possibly causing a decrease of treated patients with the consequences of the hospital running into a financial crisis. The other major issue is the increasing of the fixed costs. The issue is not necessarily the fixed costs as much as the decrease in treated patients or a low healthcare fee charged to patients. Unfortunately fixed costs do not vary with the fluctuating patient population and they represent 28% of total costs, which is a good portion of the hospital expenses. So one tool that could be used to try solving the issue would be to create a chart were both fixed and variable costs are shown as well as the number of patient population. This chart will indicate the proportion of both costs in relevance with number of patience on a monthly basis to see if there is any proportion between the two and if possible to cut costs without effecting quality of service.