MBA DISSERTATION PROPOSAL – 2020
Background
Delivery and receiving healthcare services to all humans is an essential part of life as they are a determinant of proper and safe day to day life. This paper seeks to elaborate on the challenges faced while delivering pharmaceutical services in the INUVIK BEAUFORT DELTA region. Beaufort Delta region is an area in the West that borders the Yukon Territory, East Nunavut, and to the North the Arctic Ocean.
Inuvik Beaufort Delta region is an area at which pharmaceutical services are provided by different entities working for various organizations that collectively deliver these services. They are faced with several challenges as far as efficiency and productivity are concerned.
Research problem and questions
Firstly since the pharmaceutical services are being delivered by various entities, which then work under different organizations practicing different organizational structures and strategies towards the way they work, communication among the stakeholders is not as good as it should be for efficiency purposes. As much as the companies deliver the services to the same region, they still project to make as many profits as they could because they are business entities. With this in mind, competition aspects come into play. There are instances where one company denies or delays some information or data to the other as a strategy to make the first move and enjoy maximum profits. For example, a company may get knowledge of an increase in the number of patients requiring pharmaceutical attention before others, choose not to share the information, take that opportunity, and react and be ahead in numbers; thus higher profits earlier before other companies come to the understanding of the situation. Although this move advantages the company, the rate at which residents or the patients at hand receive the services may be slow because the reason of -in the first place- needing a large number of organizations providing these services must have to attend to as many patients as possible in the least time possible.
Poor communication between the caregivers and the residents may also result in disruption during pharmaceutical service delivery as one can not get proper services; patients are required to have a history of their medication. At times, caregivers may not have adequately explained to the patients the necessity of their medication history for later use when receiving these services. Since cases of medical evacuations are more often than not, recalling to pick up patients’ medication is rare due to the panic and fear that comes with the removals, thus disrupting the onwards delivery of the pharmaceutical services correctly and with precision.
Technology and technological tools used by the various service providers may also be challenging as they are different and change and improve with time. A company may be using ancient technological outfits compared to another, making it a challenge while coordinating service delivery. In another case, a company may be so updated technology-wise, whereas the hospitals and areas where patients receive the services may be too remote to the point that there is no coverage. Delivery of services to such areas by such companies becomes a challenge as the organization may result in going back to using ancient methods that may no longer be in use.
The idea of technology and its age may also result in a challenge as persons on the ground where the services are delivered may not be conversant with it, thus prompting a training to create awareness of the technology, thus slowing down the delivery.
The use of technology and technological outfits does not entirely result in challenges; as a matter of fact, it has more beneficial advantages than not. For example, when a patient proceeds to receive pharmaceutical services without an up to date medication history, the professionals turn to the patient’s pharmacy to do a medication reconciliation report, which may be not as effective as the patient may be using several pharmacies. With the use of technological outfits, recording and retrieving records are much more manageable as all patient data may be accessed at one place with little time with few clicks on a computer’s keyboard (Wang et al., 2018, pp.3-10). That would then result in effective and fast service delivery as the whole service delivery process and operations are in a single area. They can then dispersed at any time when required.
To achieve an ideal use of technology and technological outfits, such as electronic medical records, organizations offering pharmaceutical services follow various processes to guide their operations. In this case, the lean principles of operation take play. In this, the pharmaceutical company focuses on maximizing profit while effectively serving the patients to their utmost satisfaction and minimizing the resources needed for the course. The use of technology while offering these services reduces the number of employees required by the pharmaceutical entity. Without technology, the workforce required minimizes profit and the ability to effectively serve patients. Experience of long queues as the service providers go through personal medical history for each patient manually, which takes a lot of time, is evident. It is not the case with the use of computers as only a few clicks are required. Book-keeping, cataloging, the manual making of financial statements take ages and need a more significant workforce to do increasing the resource requirement for the process to be operational, making the organization not maximize profit and or satisfy the customers’ needs.
Points at which the pharmaceutical companies are at a level that they cannot freely and effectively meet the customers’ needs due to the high rate at which customers need their services (bottlenecks) are identified by the realization that the companies are incapable of handling the flow of patients. It could be a result of fatigued employees or, in some other cases, slow or lazy employees. To correct this, companies should adopt modern ways of operation, for example, by automating several processes while delivering the services, like using machines that detect a patient on arrival and retrieves his/her records automatically and guides them to the next step at a minimum time frame.
With the use of technology, pharmaceutical companies can optimize the service delivery process. Use computers and other automated machinery to expand time frames at which the organizations operate. They operate longer hours compared to the human workforce as they do not fatigue. They also attend to large numbers of patients for they work faster compared to humans and are precise, chances of making errors and mistakes are low because they are human error-proof.
Research Objectives
Inuvik Beaufort Delta region is a remote area inhabited by traditionally and culturally affluent communities. The manner at which healthcare services are provided and received as much as quality is concerned, the presence of a modern fifty bed accredited hospital facility proves that healthcare services are of up to date. Speeds at which healthcare services are provided and received are of good momentum. There is a community health nursing staff that offers primary care in the remote community health centers and is regularly visited and offered support by physicians who are based at The Inuvik Regional Hospital, which even serves a more significant number of patients with different healthcare issues. According to dependability aspects as far as healthcare provision and receiving is concerned. Specialists from Yellowknife and Edmonton, who are hosted at the Inuvik Regional hospital on a rotational basis depending on the need to add on the staff at the hospital and the community health centers, the community is with no doubt at an excellent place to depend on healthcare wise.
Research strategy and methods
Theoretical framework
In this case, the community’s satisfaction as far as pharmaceutical requirements are concerned is dependent on how the various pharmaceutical companies relate to each other since the area receive the services from multiple organizations. Although challenges are experienced due to poor communication, differentiation in the use of technological tools and lack of coordination, as a way to improve on this it is suggested that the various companies operating in this area should come up with a centralized system that serves to satisfy the community (Yates et al., 2014, pp. 537-539). The operation to be particular should be able to store and retrieve the information and medication history of the concerned patients to improve service delivery as not all would remember to carry with them the documents, which is a necessity for efficient pharmaceutical service delivery.
Conceptual framework
This research reveals that customer satisfaction in this community is dependent on the efficient coordination and cooperation of the various pharmaceutical companies delivering the services.
Sutherland’s Drugs Limited in Yellowknife is an example of a pharmacy that operationally complies with the four V’s of operational management. It enables the customer to see and track their experience as the pharmacy offers compliance packaging, ensuring that they take their prescriptions on time to add to that, they provide free home delivery. A variety dimension is not necessarily experienced in this field of study as it is medically oriented. Since customers do not choose their ailments, the variety of drugs usable is only determined by the human body structure, not necessarily the customer preference. However, drug-producing companies are obliged to produce drugs designed for different bodies treating the same ailments.
The variation dimension in this medical oriented study only applies when pandemics happen; otherwise, seasons are not pre-determined, and production and operation usually are at a regular rate not until emergencies.
The volume dimension in this area is only determined by the number of people living in the field not specified by a specific product since the demand of a particular product can solely be determined by a pandemic or emergence of a new disease.
Challenges experienced by hospitals, perhaps in the collection of information is that the number of employees available at any given time is not adequate to collect data and attend to ailing patients. It makes it a challenge as it would take time to make the final analysis of the information gathered. In another case, independent entities may collect information that they can share with the hospitals but may have used technological tools that are not available in the community hospitals, making it hard to share or inefficient mode of information gathering.
As far as the lean concept of operations is concerned, there is a possibility to meet customers’ satisfaction using minimal resources and reducing waste. That is if all collected information and patients’ records are stored by use of technological tools that are easier to record, access, and retrieve by use of minimal staff, unlike manual data collection, storing and retrieval methods that require more staff and time. Resources used before as salaries for the extra employees in the manual systems are directed to other areas like purchases of more drugs per the demand in the market.
References
Stobbs, R., 2014. Inuvik Regional Hospital. https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/5d49daf9-0f9f-4563-9129-458bc98b02a5
Yates, C.N., Balch, G.C., Wootton, B.C. and Jørgensen, S.E., 2014. Practical aspects, logistical challenges, and regulatory considerations for modeling and managing treatment wetlands in the Canadian arctic. In Developments in Environmental Modelling (Vol. 26, pp. 567-583). Elsevier. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780444632494000245
Wang, Y., Kung, L. and Byrd, T.A., 2018. Big data analytics: Understanding its capabilities and potential benefits for healthcare organizations. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 126, pp.3-13. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162516000500
Imison, C., Castle-Clarke, S., Watson, R. and Edwards, N., 2016. Delivering the benefits of digital health care (pp. 5-6). London: Nuffield Trust.
https://www.atmedics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/nuffield-trust-delivering-the-benefits-of-digital-care-17-02-2016.pdf