HCA 615 Topic 8 Final Project: Comprehensive Health Care Organization Communication and Marketing Plan Completion

HCA 615 Topic 8 Final Project: Comprehensive Health Care Organization Communication and Marketing Plan Completion

HCA 615 Topic 8 Final Project: Comprehensive Health Care Organization Communication and Marketing Plan Completion

            A health care organization provides comprehensive services to patients in a bid to address a wide range of ailments suffered by the clients. The premise can be achieved through the preventive as well as the curative care services provided by these facilities. Effective health care organizations are analyzed based on the quality of services rendered to patients (Oliver, 2014). This depends on the capacity of the facility as identified through the bed number, employee profile and quality outcomes identified in the organization (Nathan & Kaplan, 2017). The present article is based on an analysis of Pacific Hospital to provide insights into the complexities of care encountered by the organization. The framework of the analysis starts from the name, year of establishment and the other aspects described as per the subsequent illustration. In order the communication plan, marketing plan and collaboration between the organization and the surrounding communities will be explored.

Part I: Health Care Organization Profile

Name and Type of Health Care Organization

            Pacific Hospital was established in the early 1980s to provider integrated health services to the residents of Inglewood City, California. Even though the facility was built as an acute General Public Voluntary Hospital, its services have expanded especially in 2000 when it was upgraded to a status of a teaching and referral hospital. The hospital is also a center of medical research by institutions such as Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the United States Army Medical Research Unit (USAMRU). As a teaching center, Pacific Hospital has several medical campuses for the training of students pursuing health courses.

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            The facility provides a range of medical services that are affordable to the members of the community particularly those in Inglewood and the surrounding regions. Pacific hospital is also linked to third-party payers and insurance companies to guarantee quality care to patients at relatively affordable prices. With its centric culture of Tender Loving Care, the hospital inspires hope to patients and therefore is a preferred center for a majority of communities in the city.   

Mission, Vision, and Goals

            The unstinting focus of Pacific Hospital is based on use of modern technology, affordable costs, forward-looking research and improved clinical experience. However, the priority of the facility is premised on improved patient care. The mission of the hospital is to provide the highest possible standard of care to clients in a more professional and compassionate way that guarantee quality outcomes. This is achieved when the facility avails quality healthcare as well as providing a foundation for research and learning in addition to the implementation of the national health policies. The facility’s vision is to be a center of world-class teaching and referral for all conditions affecting humanity. Based on the mission, the vision and goals of the facility are outlined below

Vision

• To promote a culture of high quality care
• To establish a first-class patient focused services by implementing high quality and evidence-based care
• To use research and education as framework for improving health of the people

Goals

• Improve health services through implementation of quality management
• Deliver high quality services to our patients
• Use teamwork and training to ensure employees realize their full potential
• Adhere to the highest ethical standards and codes of practice to protect the public    

Bed Number

            The bed number determines the size of a health facility and its ability to provide a range of health services to patients. Pacific Hospital’s bed capacity relates to the number of inpatients that the facility can accommodate for special care especially in the context of patients who require close supervision. The facility has one of the largest capacities as it hosts seventy wards, forty outpatient clinics and twenty theaters. With this capacity, the facility has a total bed number of 2500 most of which are separated as per the requirements of the hospital departments. The surgical and medical departments take the largest share of the beds with each allocated 400 beds. The labor and delivery unit of the maternity department takes 300 beds while accident and emergency department settles with 200 beds. The intensive care unit has 150 beds to accommodate the comatose patients. The remaining beds are distributed across different departments of the hospital.  

Type of Services Provided

            Pacific Hospital prides as one of the largest facility in the state of California. The facility provides a range of services through its outpatient specialized clinics inpatient units. Its in-patient specialties include areas in General Medicine, Gynecology, Critical Care and General Surgery. Main services provided by the hospital are listed below:

• Laboratory Services – provides full laboratory investigations
• Women’s Clinic- provides pre and postnatal care services
• Cardiac Unit – for all types of heart conditions
• Pediatrics Center
• Consultant Out-Patient Clinics
• Physiotherapy and Pharmacy services
• Cancer Center – avails cancer-related services including chemotherapy, biopsy and provides research on emerging issues on cancer.
• Trauma and stroke centers
• Specialist services – Diabetes Care, Infection Control, Pain Management, Respiratory Care and Palliative Services.
• Rehabilitation centers
• All types of surgery – minor and major surgeries (each of theaters in the facility has a recovery room)
• Dental Services – including cosmetic care
• Diagnostic Radiological and other imaging services – MRI, Ultrasound.
• Dietetics programs
• Accident and emergency – including fully-equipped ambulances
• Morgue services

Volumes

            Due to its outstanding patient services, Pacific Hospital receives clients from, Inglewood City, Los Angeles and other parts of the state. The facility also provides care to patients referred from other parts of the world especially those seeking our cancer services. The table below provides a summary of the admissions, outpatient care and other services provided by the facility in 2018.

Type of Service	Total Number
Out-Patient	317,023
Number of admissions	209,619
Average length of stay	3 days
Number of Discharges	177,932
Deaths	500

Quality Indicators

            Pacific Hospital has made strides in quality improvement with regard to patient care. Based on the analytics established by the Joint Commission to track performances, the facility has realized remarkable outcomes in key services (Nathan & Kaplan, 2017). The metric measurements on length of stay indicate that the facility has an average value of 3 days, which is below the recommended level of 4.5 days but confirms an improvement in quality of care and cost reductions. The readmission rate for the facility is 9.5% against recommended rate of 15.3% (Ghazisaeidi et al., 2015). Nonetheless, performance metrics related to hospital procedures such as sepsis, postoperative respiratory failures, pulmonary embolism and hemorrhages were optimal in 2018 as compared to 2017 confirming improved care.

Moreover, the readmission rates of the facility have also been found to be above the national average. The patient safety indicator for Pacific Hospital is also above the national average. Moreover, the inpatient quality indicators such as mortality rate has reduced for the hospital from 7% to 4% in 2018, implying that the hospital staff conduct a higher volume of procedure to which evidence exists that a higher volume leads to prevention of hospital deaths. Also, the hospital registered lower levels of Pediatric Quality Indicators, implying that provider level indicators for neonates and children under 17 years have improved (Howard et al., 2018). In overall, the facility has been awarded class “A” grades based on point of care services and safety standards in patient care.  

Financial Performance Indicators

            Since Pacific Hospital is a non-profit organization, the financial performances were analyzed on a number of metrics. The cost per discharge is significantly lower to ensure it is affordable for all categories of patients. The hospital’s operating margin is optimal to guarantee sustainability of the organization. The bad debts profile of Pacific Hospital is within the recommended ranges indicating that the facility has good credit ratings for future development (Ghazisaeidi et al., 2015). However, the costs on medical supplies tend to take the largest portion of the facility’s budget and this call for the hospital management to address the issue amicably.

            Moreover, the CMS program performance can also be used to appraise the financial performance of the hospital. The Pacific Hospital received value-based rewards for enhancement in variety of financial and quality metrics. In the just concluded year, the hospital received     

$4,101,296,000 from 58 652 patient discharges, which is a new high for it and meets the national threshold. Thus, the hospital has improved care delivery while reducing costs.

Human Resource Challenges

            Similar to other care facilities, Pacific Hospital faces a challenge of nurse staffing. Currently, the nurse-to-patient ratio is 1:6 against the recommended ratio of 1:4. The challenge has been due to the overwhelming number of patients seeking services at the facility (Nathan & Kaplan, 2017). However, other staff populations are within the optimal range.

Diversity Issues

            Pacific Hospital addresses diversity issues in Inglewood City and California as a whole. The staff population is made up of a blend of mixed cultures representing both the majority and minority racial groups (West et al., 2014). However, a large proportion of the non-Hispanic whites (65%) make-up the staff population (Munnich, 2014). Pacific Hospital also receives patients from diverse populations. 30% of the populations are non-Hispanic whites, 25% black-Americans 15% Hispanics while 40% comprise of other racial groups.

Community Population Statistics

            As per the population statistics of 2010, Inglewood City had 109,419 people and these are the majority members seeking care at Pacific Hospital. Non-Hispanic white is made up of 23.7% of the population while African Americans comprise of the second largest population at 31.8%. Hispanics took the lead at 42.4% and Native Americans recorded the least value at 0.6%. Asians made of 1.5% of the population.  

Part 2: Communication Plan

The creation of a communication plan for Pacific Hospital is of utmost importance given the role that it plays in both shaping health care personnel, conducting research, and improving the quality of life of patients. In order to provide these services, the facility requires an elaborate communication plan so as to disseminate requisite information to the right audience at the right time. As such, Pacific Hospital requisite elaborate communication channels that can be used to reach both its internal and external audiences.

Internal Communication Plan: Internal stakeholders for pacific hospital play a crucial role in ensuring that the organization’s goals, objectives, missions and visions are achieved. However, in order to them to do this, Pacific hospital’s management needs to have an elaborate plan of communicating their strategic plan to these stakeholders. The management can adopt a variety of methodologies to achieve such an objective. These internal communication channels include the following:

• Staff meetings: Staff meeting is a form of face-to-face communication that Pacific Hospital managers can use to exchange information, as well as plan and coordinate the hospital’s program activities.
• Custom newsletter: This kind of communication is intended to showcase news at operation as well as personal levels. The newsletter will be designed in a manner that reflects closely on the way that staff engaged with knowledge and information outside work in order to reduce the corporate spin perception among the internal stakeholders (Chen  et al., 2015).
• Desktop alerts: The usage of desktop alerts is intended the issue of staff or other internal stakeholders missing emails. The usage of desktop tickers to make reminders will help internal stakeholders to remember meetings and undertakings so as to enhance the streamlining of clinic efficiency and improving efficiency.
• Emails: Emails are a more formal means of internal communication. Through its usage, the management of the hospital will pass pertinent information to the stakeholders in an official tone, which will improve the actualization of the message.

Other important internal communication stratagems that will be employed by Pacific Hospital may include personal meetings, employee training intrinsic to the organization, company blogs, and staff communication (Quirke, 2017). However, the Pacific Hospital management will adopt these methodologies less frequently.

External Communication Plan: External stakeholders also play an integral role in the operations and reputation of the Pacific Hospital. As such, there is need to engage them particularly as regards the strategic planning of the hospital as well as enabling them to feel part of the hospital. As such, certain external communication methods will be adopted by Pacific Hospital to disseminate crucial information to external stakeholders. These methodologies include:

• Letters- This form of communication will be used to pass information concerning important resolution by Pacific Hospital management that may affect external stakeholders.
• Direct mails: Pacific Hospital will also adopt the usage of direct mails to alert external stakeholders regarding important resolutions passed by the hospital management that affect them (Lewis, 2019).
• Pamphlets and brochures: These two will be distributed at strategic points to ensure that external stakeholders are acquainted with the hospital’s services, missions, and resolutions that will have been passed at AGMs.
• Print media: The application of this modality of external communication will occur particularly when Pacific Hospital management wants to pass important information to the surrounding community.
• Organizational channel- In this method, Pacific Hospital will engage all the constituents of the influential community organizations to solicit for their opinions and possibly backing regarding multifarious issues.
• Public meetings: Surrounding communities play an essential role in the operations of Pacific Hospital. Therefore, public meetings will be used to engage them and possibly pass pertinent information affecting them (Austin & Pinkleton, 2015).

Stakeholder Analysis

The above external and internal communication plan will be used to disseminate information to Pacific Hospital’s internal and external stakeholders. As such, mapping these stakeholders forms a fundamental part of the communication plan creation process. Indeed, stakeholder mapping is the start of stakeholder engagement. Thus, given the mission, visions, and services offered by Pacific Hospital, internal stakeholders who participate in the funding, coordination, publication and resourcing will be crucial. These stakeholders include all the hospital staff such as the nursing staff, assistant practitioners, accident and emergency staff, audiologists, cardio-respiratory system team, charge nurses, charge hands, catering staff, chief financial officer, research scientists, assistant research scientists, among others (Millar, Freeman, & Mannion, 2015). Essentially, the communication plan will target all the Pacific Hospital staff as the internal stakeholders.

Moreover, external stakeholders also play an important role in ensuring that a health care facility reaches its objectives. These stakeholders either impact or are impacted by a hospital yet they do not operate within the hospital precincts. Thus, the present communication plan will target such people as the patients, the suppliers, service users, funders, quality assessors, special interest groups, the surrounding community, media, and the wider public health workforce.

Media Methods

             The media plays an important role in marketing and passing pertinent information concerning an organization. Its wide reach as a channel makes it particularly key to communicating information or advertising a health care facility. As such, the Pacific Hospital will leverage some of the print and mass media channels to relay information to stakeholders. To this end, radio and television will be employed to market the facility as a world class health care provider to external stakeholders (Bartra & Keller, 2015). Moreover, other pertinent information such as research results and public health promotional activities will be disseminated using newspapers and the above channels. Lastly, Pacific Hospital will also leverage the targeted nature of direct mail to pass important information to both its external and external stakeholders.  Lastly, given the digitalized nature of contemporary health care, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter will also be used to pass information to young stakeholders (Radu et al., 2017). In essence, these media channels will be paramount in ensuring a wide reach of information.

Tag Lines, Logos, Photos

            Marketing a health care organization requires the use of catchy phrases in taglines, visually enticing logos, and important photographs denoting the company’s services. For Pacific Hospital, the following tagline will be used: Better Doctors, Better Care.

            A company logo is a symbol of its identity. As such, it has to be eye-catching since it influences the first impression of a customer. For Pacific Hospital, the following logo will be used:

The following photo will be used in marketing Pacific Hospital:

Further, Pacific Hospital will adopt the usage of the following slogan: “Empowering Individuals with Better Health.”

Letterhead, Newsletters…