Strategic Management in Healthcare Organizations

Strategic Management in Healthcare Organizations

Introduction: The Nature of Strategic Management

Strategic management can be defined as the art and science involving formulation, implementation and evaluation of the cross- functional decisions, thus enabling an organization to get hold of its objectives and to achieve them. in other words, it is an ongoing process of formulating, implementing and controlling the broad plan guides that assist an organization in achieving the strategic goals that have been decided by the internal and external environment of the organization.

As mentioned earlier, strategic management is an ongoing process and extends throughout the existence period of the organization. The process starts with the formulation of goals, which are then implemented and evaluated and controlled by the managers. Thus, the management is responsible for setting up goals and also for modifying and implementing them.

Strategic management holds utmost importance for any organization, mainly due to the fact that very existence of the organization is linked with this process. In the age of globalization, every decision has to be made keeping the global demands in view, and thus organizations need to evolve and change quickly, in order to keep pace with the competitors and thus immense responsibility lies with the strategic managers, who are responsible for market studies and keeping the organization at par with international standards.

Understanding the Health Care Environment

Health care environment is different from all the other organizational environments due to its nature and work carried out within these organizations. The health care environment has to be set after keen observation and thorough research so that the patients as well as all the other related personnel can be benefitted from it.

The health care environment deals with a number of stake holders, including the patients, the visitors, the careers and the health care staff, each of which is highly affected by the health care environment. Thus, the strategic managers have to keep all of these in view while formulating any new plan, as any plan, no matter how effective and influential it might be, cannot be implemented in a health care organization unless it is compatible with the patients and the careers needs and demands. The environment mainly needs to have a few basic characteristics, including cleanliness, provision of healthy food, ward housekeeping, patient environment networks, privacy and dignity and a healing environment. The presence of these characteristics not only assists in providing the patients with a pleasant experience but also add to the strategic manager's expertise and success (Ginter, Swayne and Duncan, 2002).

The health services industry: The intersection of business and medicine. Many organizations are involved, including hospitals, health clinics, medical group practices, etc.

As the title suggests, the health care organizations are mainly an amalgam of business and health care sector, thus needs and demands of both have to be kept in mind (Hamel, 2002). The health care organizations are meant for business and also for providing the best health care facilities to the patients, and thus have to be managed in a way ...