I work as a medical assistant at Patient First in Hamilton, New Jersey. Patient First is a community healthcare facility that operates in one location. It offers emergency medicine, family medicine, and other specialties and has four physicians, several medical assistants, and nurses. This hospital’s stakeholders are divided into two; internal and external stakeholders. The external stakeholders are responsible for providing inputs to the organization and include pharmaceutical firms, patients, and the financial community, such as the government and NGOs. Internal stakeholders operate within the hospital and its environs and are divided into two; secondary stakeholders and key stakeholders. Secondary stakeholders attend directly to the patients and make sure that patients’ needs are well met, and the maintenance of set hospital policies and include the health care’s physicians and caregivers. Key stakeholders include people who formulate, pass, and enforce the hospital’s guiding policies.
The government is responsible for incorporating health services and emphasizing institutional dependency. The government also plans for better healthcare programs, draws policies, and facilitates fundamental medicine provision. The patients are citizens, voters, and in most cases, taxpayers from the Hamilton community. Patient First’ Healthcare providers include physicians and caregivers. They offer services directly to the patients. Non-Governmental Agencies (NGOs) supplement government organizations’ work by providing health education to the community and training the hospital’s management and healthcare providers. Health insurance companies provide medical care programs to patients. Insurance companies also create a pool of financial resources and ensure financial sustainability to covered members. Finally, there are the hospital administrators and governing bodies who form the hospital’s top-level management. They include the board of trustees, the chief executive officer, and the chief finance officer. The board of trustees is responsible for setting the mission statement, ensuring quality care, staff oversight and finance, selection, and appraisal of the CEO. The CEO provides the institution’s effective running, passes down policies, identifies the community’s health issues, and pushes the team to handle. The CFO manages the available finances, allocates sufficient funds based on need and urgency. The hospital also has various management bodies, such as the human resources responsible for the employees’ wellbeing.
The current urgent problem faced by the Patient First health facility is the loss of key physicians to more extensive healthcare facilities. As argued earlier, Patient First has four physicians. As it stands, these physicians are not enough. The current physicians are experienced and have learned all the operational ways of the hospital. However, more prominent hospitals have more active recruiting schedules and have better offers. Apart from the reasonable work offers, the large hospital systems are preferred due to their ability to offer more resources and a more considerable negotiating clout. As a result, most physicians tend to shift to bigger hospitals.
Top-level management is making various policies that will ensure that the right physicians, who match the hospital’s culture, are hired. Physicians who are happy in the hospital’s environment and people will tend to stick around. The policies also vouch for the offering of competitive salaries and benefits to the physicians. This is achievable by finding out what physicians in other hospitals are offered and matching the payment or increasing it. The middle-level management consisting of the various managers is responsible for executing the health care policies and objectives formulated by the top management. This means that they are responsible for ensuring that the hired physicians are enough and comfortable with the facility’s culture. They are also responsible for passing this information to lower management. They also take feedback from the physicians to the top management.
High physicians’ turnover negatively affects a company, and especially in terms of finances. The constant need to hire more physicians who are best suited for the job and offer competitive pay poses a financial burden to the Patient First healthcare facility. Again, the need to train new physicians is costly and time-consuming. The financial burden is enhanced by the delayed Medicare reimbursements, patient competition from other healthcare facilities, and inadequate revenue cycle management. These financial problems imply the lack of enough funds to execute the policies made by the top management. As a result, the finance department is forced to seek additional funds from loans. The department should also try to enhance Patient First’s revenue streams by improving the medicare package. The healthcare facility could also consider increasing their working hours to enhance the daily and overall revenue. This would give Patient First financial autonomy as well as a competitive advantage.