Faith Community Hospital Mission Statement

Faith Community Hospital Case Study
Executive Summary

The mission statement of Faith Community Hospital Mission states,

With the foundation and commitment to our spiritual heritage and values, our mission is to promote the health and well being of the people in the communities we serve through a comprehensive continuum of services provided in collaboration with the partners who share the same values.

However, Faith Community Hospital is not living up to its mission statement. To the contrary, it is in an organizational crisis. Not an acute crises; rather a steady, chronic decline due to many external and internal forces affecting the health care industry. The three main challenges at Faith Community Hospital that will be examined in this executive summary are:

1. Organizational processes relating increasing cost of providing medical services.
2. The ethical-decision making process by Faith Community Hospital staff members.
3.
Communication issues involving the stakeholders of the Faith Community Hospital

Certain steps must be taken in order to remedy the situation.
For starters, the organizational process needs to be addressed. A prime example of this is the rising cost of health care compared to the hospitals reimbursement rate from the insurance companies. As stated by the CEO, the cost has increased from $217 to $240 per day. This rise in cost must be examined, and the root cause pinpointed. Ways to determine this increase include:

1. Research the common insurance companies that are billed by Faith Community Hospital. Reimbursement rates may be higher if the hospital becomes a participating member if they are not already.
2. Decline to participate in Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) which typically yield a lower reimbursement rate, and limit the treatment options that can be administered by staff members.
3. Research charitable organizations willing to help with underprivileged patients and their medical needs. Many of these patients ate not eligible for state welfare, but still require financial
aid.

Secondly, the ethical decision making process needs to be analyzed. The first responsibility of the health care profession was spelled out twenty-five hundred years ago in the Hippocratic Oath- Primum non noncere. Translated it means, " Above all, not knowingly doing harm." The Faith Community Hospital must take this into consideration as well as its mission statement. With this in mind, Faith Community Hospital would have a clear, concise policy communicating the ethical treatment of patients by the staff. Ways to enable this vision are to:

1. Meet with staff representatives, the Board of Directors, representatives form the religious community and the community at large to review and/or revise the existing ethics policy at the Faith Community Hospital. Next, distribute this newly created policy to all stakeholders.
2. Distribute a patient form of the same policy from a patient advocate point of view, taking into consideration all religious points of view.
3. Require staff to treat patients according to the Faith Community Hospital policy, rather than by their own personal or religious beliefs, opting to be removed from the case if it interferes with their personal beliefs. This should only be done without fear of retribution from administration or management.

Finally, communication issues involving the stakeholders must be remedied. The hospital organization is probably one of the most complex knowledge organizations in the world today. Effective communication should be of the utmost importance, as it could mean life or death for a patient. Some options to improve stakeholder communication are:

1. Encourage sideways communication by holding regular meetings with the CEO, Board Members and staff representatives from all departments.
2. Invest in computer networking capabilities, enabling effective communication between all departments.
3. Offer an Effective Communication course to all staff members, in an effort to increase effective communication.
4. Provide a means of communication between community members and patients, perhaps along the line of an advocacy desk. They could bridge the communication gap between the stakeholders and the community and/or patients.

In conclusion, Faith Community Hospital needs to make drastic changes in their organization processes, ethical-decision making process and stakeholder communication. The aforementioned options should be an excellent starting point to assist the hospital on its road to recovery.