Quality Management Plan
HCA Healthcare, Inc.
Introduction
There are a couple of aspects of quality management in the healthcare organization. These aspects include meeting or exceeding the expectations, standards, and requirements of federal, state, and other healthcare industry stakeholders. Healthcare organizations must also maintain quality equipment, facilities, and systems to ensure better services to customers. The tools and processes required to enhance quality management in a healthcare organization are evolving day by day and causing financial strain as the organization strives to adopt them. For healthcare organizations to adapt to the increasingly complex industry, operational and financial improvements are required. Workflow processes play a major role in helping healthcare organization understand their goals and objectives. This paper will look into quality management in HCA Healthcare Inc. and provide a plan to improve it.
Company Analysis
HCA Healthcare Inc. is an organization that provides healthcare services in areas such as freestanding surgery centers, operating hospitals, urgent care centers, and emergency rooms. The organization offers a vast array of services that includes cardiology, general surgeries, neurosurgery, oncology, obstetrics, orthopedics, and medical specialties. It also offers other services, such as emergency services and diagnostic services. The organization was founded in 1968 by Dr. Thomas First Senior, Jack Massey, and Dr. Thomas First Junior, and its headquarters is in Nashville, Tennessee (Forbes, 2020). The organization is committed to care and improvement of people’s life. It offers healthcare services to 185 hospitals and more than 1,800 care centers across the United States (FAH POLICY BLOG TEAM 2019). The organization also offers its services in the United Kingdom. The Ethisphere Institute has recognized HCA Healthcare Inc. for the tenth time as its most ethical organization.
The organization has been awarded the title ten times consecutively now. This shows a reflection of the culture that exists in the organization. It has approximately 265,000 employees with a strong sense of dedication to improve the lives of the patients and the communities the organization serves. The organization has a reputation for giving back to the community it serves. In 2018 it donated more than $41 million to charity and provided uninsured discounts, charity care, and other free services at approximately $3.3 billion. The organization engaged its employees in community volunteer work for more than 150,000 hours in 2018. HCA Healthcare Inc. culture believes in inclusion to support the delivery of healthcare services to all the community members. Its affiliates use more than 160 languages to communicate with stakeholders from diverse communities and cultures (FAH POLICY BLOG TEAM 2019).
The organization cares for the people who live from inside the company and from outside. It believes in creating a clean and pollution-free environment for people to thrive. It supports the Go Green initiative and ensures that environmental regulations and protocols are followed when performing any operation or activities outside the organization. Despite all the praise the organization has received over the years, it has been facing critics from its human resource department. The employees have been filing complaints accusing the company of neglect and exposing them to unsafe working environments. The organization is the world’s wealthiest healthcare services prodder and made a profit of $7 billion in the last two financial years Mateus, 2020). It has a net worth of $36 billion and managed to pay its Chief Executive Officer a $26 million salary last year. Still, despite all that ability, the company has failed to provide adequate protective gear. The company also has been warning that it will lay off thousands of its employees if they do not accept wage freezes and other propositions. This has raised eyebrows among the employees and the patients because the organization received a $1 billion bailout from the federal government to assist in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic Mateus, 2020). The employees are raising many concerns because the organization is still laying off employees and freezing their wages despite pocketing large sums of finances. The human resource department is facing issues because the company is still paying its executives large amounts of salaries while discriminating the low-level employees. Unlike other large organizations that have put all their finances and attention to the frontline workers, the organization is doing the opposite.
Many workers, especially those who clean patient rooms, have scammed to the virus because of what has been termed as a lack of proper protective equipment from the organization. This lead to nurses staging protests in various HCA hospitals across the country. The nurses claimed that the organization is putting its profits over the staff and the patients. Employees at more than 19 HCA hospitals filled complaints to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) based on the lack of proper masks for healthcare settings. The employees also complained that them to reuse the medical protective gear. They said that sometimes they are even forced to attend to patients without personal protective equipment. Despite the increased responsibilities that the workers are experiencing in the hospitals, the organization does not care about their wellbeing Mateus, 2020). There is huge dissatisfaction with employees in the organization, which might cause problems that might affect the organization’s future. The complaints that the employees are filing against the organization are harmful not only to its public image but also to productivity. The lack of motivation and satisfaction impacts the productivity and morale of employees. This can lead to poor services to customers because the employees feel that the organization does not consider them and their interests. Especially at this time of the pandemic, the organization should motivate its employees at the front line because they are the pillars that are holding the company.
The organization must understand that it is dealing with people’s lives, and the company’s future depends on them. It is unethical for the company to do what it is doing because it has the resources to fund the workers’ requirements. The government has ensured that the company does not go bankrupt by providing it with the bailout, but it seems that the funds are not being used for the right purpose. The protests that the employees are holding are going public, exposing the internal state of the company. The public might scare away from the organization’s services, especially when they learn that coronavirus precautions are not up to standard. This will come along with a negative effect such that the company might find itself losing customers to its rivals (Mateus, 2020). Patients will also be concerned about their stay at the hospital, especially when they consider that the organization cannot protect its employees. They might feel it is risky to be admitted to the organization’s hospital. To make the matter worse, the company has denied the allegations that its employees have been striking about. The organization seems to fail in acknowledging the problem. This is wrong because the more it overlooks the problem, the more it escalates Mateus, 2020). Therefore the fire that is starting might be hard to extinguish if the organization does not act quickly. Embracing the problem is the right approach the organization should take to avoid losing employees, customers, and profits just because of neglect.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis is a tool used by organizations to conduct strategic planning, depending on the situations surrounding it. It is the technique most organizations use to evaluate their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in their current environment. HCA Healthcare Inc. is the world’s leading hospital chain organization. Through SWOT analysis, the company has been able to maintain its position for many decades. The SWOT analysis is an interactive process that requires the coordination of all the departments in the organization. All the departments ranging from finance, marketing, management information system, operations, and strategic planning must work together for the successful SWOT analysis. The analysis helps the organization identify internal strategic factors: strengths and weaknesses, and external strategic factors, which are opportunities and threats. The SWOT analysis helps the organization’s management to create four categories of strategies. These strategies are strength-opportunities strategies, weakness-opportunities strategies, strength-threats strategies, and weaknesses-threats strategies. The strategies are meant to help the organization counter threats, eliminate weaknesses, invest in opportunities, and protect its strengths (Williamson, 2018).
Being the world’s prominent healthcare services provider, HCA Healthcare Inc. has a couple of strengths that help it fight for a healthcare industry position. The strengths not only help the organization to maintain its current position but also penetrate new markets. The strengths of the organization are as follows. First, the organization has automated activities and operations in all its hospitals. The automation helps the company to maintain consistent quality services to its customers. It also helps it to scale down or up based on market demand. The company’s next strength is a strong brand that helps it fight for a huge market in the healthcare industry. The brand is a strength for the organization because it can establish new products or when entering new markets. People globally recognize the brand, and if it decides to endorse new products in the market, it would be easy to get acceptance. The next strength is successful tracking that helps it to develop new products. The tracking of activities and operations happening in and out of the organization helps it facilitate product innovation. The next strength is a high customer satisfaction level with the organization’s services (Williamson, 2018).
The organization has a strong customer relationship department that helps manage its customers well through dedicated services and products. The satisfaction of customers is not only useful for the company in maintaining customer loyalty but also attracting new customers. The next strength is an exceptional return from its capital expenditure. The organization has high success in executing new projects and generating new products and services that increase revenue streams. The next strength is high success in its go marketing strategies when selling its products. The next strength is a strong free cash flow, which helps raise resources to facilitate its projects. The next strength is the strong dealer community, which the organization has established by building a good culture among its distributors and dealers (Williamson, 2018). The company encourages its dealers and distributors to invest in the promotion of products and services and training to the sales team. This helps to equip the employees with the best skills to apply in marketing the organization’s products and services.
Despite all the strengths the organization has, there are still areas that it needs to improve on. These areas are the weaknesses of the company. Strategies involve the development of ways to improve on weaknesses that the organization is facing. The first weakness that HCA Healthcare Inc. faces is that its organizational structure is only compatible with the current business models. This makes it difficult for the company to adjust to the adjacent product segments. The next weakness is that the organization has limited success outside its core businesses (Williamson, 2018). Despite experiencing huge success in the healthcare industry, the organization has not been such success in other industries. The other weakness is trouble in dealing with challenges caused by small companies that enter their market niches. The organization has been forced to create small sales teams to respond to the challenges. The next weakness inefficiencies in financial management. The liquid assets and the organization’s current ratio indicate that the organization can use its finances more efficiently. The next weakness is gaps in the product range that the organization sells. The lack of choice gives competitors of the company to give the organization stiff rivalry. The last weakness is that the organization has a low contribution margin and the profitability ratio compared to the industrial average (Williamson, 2018).
In the external environment, HCA Healthcare, Inc. has opportunities and threats that face it. The first opportunity is the taxation policies that have been introduced. The policies help the organization to exploit more projects and increase its profitability. The next opportunity is the growth of the economy and customer spending. Since the Great Recession, the country has been experiencing a stable economy, and customer spending is high. This is an opportunity for the organization to increase its customer base and revenue. The next opportunity is strong free cash flows that give the organization enough resources to exploit more product segments. With more cash in the bank, the organization has a huge opportunity to invest in new projects and technologies to improve customers’ services. The next opportunity is the low inflation rate that ensures the market (Williamson, 2018). Low inflation helps people to invest through loans such that they have money to afford healthcare services. The last opportunity is the government’s green drive, encouraging more organizations to procure the organization’s products.
Of course, the market does not always provide an organization with opportunities alone but also threats. HCA Healthcare Inc. is not an exception because it also has threats that exist in its industry. The first threat is the increasing trend of isolationism in the United States. The trend is dangerous to the company because it can expand to other countries the organization invests in. This can negatively impact the profits of the organization due to reduced sales. The next threat is liability law differences in various countries across the world. Because of market differences in various countries, the organization is faced with valid liability laws. The next threat is the shortage of highly qualified employees to attend to patients. In some areas that the organization operates, there are not enough skilled employees to work (Williamson, 2018). The next threat is consumer behavior change due to an increasing trend in online medical products and services. This means the organization must be vigilant to deal with providers who are going online. The next threat is increasing prices of raw materials affecting the profitability of the organization. The next threat is that some of the most profitable products of the organization are seasonal. Therefore any disruption such as the COVID-19 pandemic can affect the profitability of the organization massively. Employees currently strike the organization’s last threat in various hospitals (Williamson, 2018). This affects the reputation of the organization negatively and can lead to loss of customers to competitors.
Low Current Ratio Weakness Improvement Plan
The current ratio is a crucial liquidity ratio used by financial institutions and banks to extend business loans. The current ratio of HCA Healthcare Inc. is not good, especially when compared to the industrial average. However, the company can improve its current ratio. The organization needs to develop strategies that will improve the management of the current assets and liabilities. This is not an easy task because the organization has to do the task for a full financial year to work. However, the organization must be careful because it does not mean it. After all, the current ratio is high. The liquidity will be high also. Delayed customer payments or a dipping sale can raise the current ratio, and the organization still has low liquidity. Therefore the organization has to take three steps to improve its current ratio and liquid assets. First, it has to improve its debtors and account receivables conversion cycle next. It has to pay off its current liabilities in time to decrease current liabilities at the end of the financial year. Finally, the organization should sell off all the unproductive assets to avoid blocking cash that can be variable to the organization rather than unused fixed assets (Lamberg & Vålming, 2019).
References
FAH POLICY BLOG TEAM. (2019). HCA Healthcare Named a 2019 World’s Most Ethical Company. Retrieved August 26, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCA_Healthcare
Forbes. (2020). HCA Healthcare (HCA). Retrieved August 26, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/companies/hca-healthcare/
Lamberg, S., & Vålming, S. (2019). Impact of Liquidity Management on Profitability: A study of the adaption of liquidity strategies in a financial crisis.
Mateus, B. (2020). Nurses and support staff at HCA Healthcare set to strike California hospital over cuts and PPE shortages. Retrieved August 26, 2020, from https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/26/hcas-j26.html
Williamson, D. (2018). HCA Healthcare Inc SWOT Analysis / SWOT Matrix. Retrieved August 26, 2020, from https://www.essay48.com/term-paper/3997-HCA-Healthcare-Inc-Swot-Analysis