Scenario
Hospitals are integral part of the healthcare system. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), hospitals are institutes for healthcare facilities that have an organised structure of medical and other relevant professional staffs and inpatient facilities to provide service 24 hours every day. The organizational structure of the hospitals must be based on the needs of the people, with the objective of contributing to the Universal Health Coverage. Health is an important factor in the lives of the people, and as the facility that provides it, hospitals need to be always equipped with adequate machineries and workforce. In the context of hospitals that offer services to the army, it is even more crucial that they have the most efficient technologies and proficient medical and supporting staffs to respond to emergencies and provide acute services. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the assets that are required in a hospital to work efficiently and find the capability gap to recommend ways to overcome the situations.
Functional assets are the elements that an organization needs to function properly in order to provide adequate service. The functional area analysis (FAA) is the process of identifying the various functions and operations of an organization along with the condition and standard that it needs to achieve the objectives of the military. This analysis is performed to understand the required capabilities of an organization. The functions of a hospital include diagnostic, emergency care, curative, observational, preventative, and rehabilitative service. In addition to this, it also has residential and outpatient service. With the help of FAA, it can be said that in order to provide the basic services, a hospital should have assets like electronic beds, x-ray machines, suction machines, pumps, air purifiers, coolers, generators, generators, respirator, heart monitor, sterilizing equipment, compressors, ambulances, arthroscopic equipment, wheel chairs, and computers. These assets should be technologically advanced and properly maintained, in order to provide the best services. The floor planning should be able to allocate sufficient space for each section and rooms, and the departments should be situated according to convenience and functional ease. Apart from the machineries, the hospitals also must have adequate and capable staffs to offer proper service. Therefore, it must have sufficient amount of doctors, both general and specialised, nursing care providers, anaesthetists, staff attendants, patient attendants, supervisors, cleaning staffs, dietician, and patient relation managers. The hospital must also have adequate supply of power and water, and the maintenance of the hygiene should be under observation. Work can be done efficiently only when the staffs are proficient. Therefore, all the staffs, both physicians and non-physicians, should be properly trained. Moreover, in order to function effectively, the tasks and responsibilities should be allocated among the staffs according to their capabilities.
The process of functional needs analysis (FNA) is for assessing both current as well as future capabilities of an organization in order to meet the military goals. FNA is used to detect any functional inability of an organization that might make it impossible to achieve desired outcomes. Therefore, it can be said that it helps to identify the capability gaps in an organization. Moreover, it also recognises capabilities that have redundancies. Through FNA, the functional needs of a hospital can be determined, which would lead to the capability gaps. Analyzing the current and future capabilities, a major capability gap has been identified as the hospital is incapable of providing the best services due to the deficits in the machines and staff efficiency. It has been noticed that a considerable number of technical staffs are being incapable of properly operating some machines, such as radiology machines. Staffs are also not skilfully handling the logistics. Another issue has arisen regarding the inefficient work of the nursing staffs. These nursing staffs are not being able to complete the day’s responsibilities efficiently due to the lack of time they are getting to the tasks. The reason behind this is the poor responsibility allocation planning. In terms of equipment, the machines and tools the hospital possesses are backdated. These equipments works less efficiently than the modern day sophisticated equipments. The machines are lacking in performance as they are not well maintained. There is a deficiency in the number of appropriately equipped ambulances too. These reasons together is reducing the performance of the hospital and losing the trust of the patients.
Functional Assets of a Hospital
The functional solutions analysis (FSA) assesses the approaches of the organization, training, personnel, facilities, materials, and doctrine to mitigate the capability gaps, which are identified in the FNA. The capability gaps can be resolved with help of the decision supporting system (DSS). The DSS is a kind of information system to support the process of decision making in the organizations. The objective of this system is to combine the analytic techniques with data to solve the problems regarding the organisational structure. It emphasizes on the adaptability and flexibility to ease the process of change. There are three major DSS – passive, active, and cooperative. While the passive DSS helps the decision making process yet is incapable of bringing out solutions, the active DSS make it possible to figure out solutions. The cooperative DSS, however, helps to select the most appropriate solution through a process of modifying and refining.
With the help of the previous processes, suggestions can be proposed to improve the condition and standard of the hospital. At first, investors should be immediately notified and funds should be raised to equip the hospital with latest technical machineries. With technologically advanced and sophisticated machines and tools, the process of diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention would be a lot easier and accurate. The durability of the equipments should be as accurately measured as possible, and based on that the maintenance plan should be made and followed. In addition to this, the number of sufficiently equipped ambulance needs to be increased to provide multiple services at the same time. Secondly, the management should discus with the employees to make a decision on allocating responsibilities in a way that these employees get enough time to manage their duties efficiently and in time. In order to solve the issue with inadequately trained technicians, the hospitals need to arrange a few classes on how to use the machines properly and give on job training to make the training most effective. They should be put under proficient supervisors to monitor and guide them properly.
Organisations need to operate efficiently in its each functional area to achieve the desired goals. In the context of hospitals, it is even more crucial for these areas to function properly as the hospitals provide one of the most necessary services – healthcare service. As hospitals often deal with emergencies and offer services 24 hours, it is crucial to be prepared adequately, in terms of both staffs and equipments, to provide the best service. Therefore, the hospital must recognise the assets required in the healthcare service with the help of the functional area analysis. Based on the assets that a hospital must have, the functional needs analysis has been performed to identify the capability gap in the organization. It has been found that the hospital is incapable of serving its patients efficiently due to a lack in modern and technologically advanced equipments, and proficient nursing and technical staffs. Based on these findings, functional solutions analysis has been conducted to ideate actions that must be taken to improve the condition and standard of the hospital. With the help of the decision support system, suggestions have been proposed to raise funds for the purchase of the modern equipments, train the incapable staffs, and allocate responsibilities according to the capability of the staffs.
Concept: In order to function effectively and efficiently, any organization must have assets that are capable of doing so. Due to the lack of concern, these assets may have capability gaps, which lead to disruption of the functions and operations. As hospital provides necessary service, it is even more crucial that the assets are always capable of properly functioning. Therefore, the capability gaps must be detected and necessary actions must be taken to eradicate those gaps. |
Support Point 1: Functional area analysis makes an assessment of the functional areas to determine the assets that are required in an organization for it to function efficiently. It helped to understand what are the assets that a hospital should have to function properly. |
Support Point 2: Functional needs analysis assesses both present and future capabilities of an organization to meet its desired objectives, and identifies the capability gaps. It helped to identify the capability gap of the hospital regarding lack of modern equipment and trained staffs. |
Support Point 3: Functional solution analysis is a process identifies the solutions that must be undertaken in the operational areas of the organization to function properly. |
Conclusion: As the emergency service provider, hospitals must always be well equipped and sufficiently staffed, in terms of both number and training. The issues in this hospital can be solved in two ways. Firstly, funds should be arranged to buy modern and technologically advanced machines and tools. Proper maintenance planning is also needed for both old and new machineries. Secondly, the staffs should be given adequate time to complete their duties properly. The staffs lacking in training also needs to be given on job training. |
World Health Organization. (2018). Hospitals. [online] Available at: https://www.who.int/hospitals/en/ [Accessed 27 Sep. 2018].
Schulze, M., Mauersberger, J. and Beuche, D., 2013, August. Functional safety and variability: can it be brought together?. In Proceedings of the 17th International Software Product Line Conference (pp. 236-243). ACM.
Musen, M.A., Middleton, B. and Greenes, R.A., 2014. Clinical decision-support systems. In Biomedical informatics (pp. 643-674). Springer, London.
Shepherd, A., 2014. Hierarchial task analysis. CRC Press.
Bolden, R., 2016. Leadership, management and organisational development. In Gower handbook of leadership and management development (pp. 143-158). Routledge.
Orletsky, D., Rosello, A. and Stillion, J. (2011). Intratheater Airlift Functional Area Analysis (FAA). [online] Rand.org. Available at: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2011/RAND_MG685.pdf [Accessed 27 Sep. 2018].
Stillion, J., Orletsky, D. and Rosello, A. (2011). Intratheater Airlift Functional Needs Analysis (FNA). [online] Rand.org. Available at: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2011/RAND_MG822.pdf [Accessed 27 Sep. 2018].
Demirkan, H. and Delen, D., 2013. Leveraging the capabilities of service-oriented decision support systems: Putting analytics and big data in cloud. Decision Support Systems, 55(1), pp.412-421.
Orletsky, D., Norton, D., Rosello, A., Stanley, W., Kennedy, M., Boito, M., Chow, B. and Kim, Y. (2011). Intratheater Airlift Functional Solution Analysis (FSA). [online] Rand.org. Available at: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2011/RAND_MG818.pdf [Accessed 27 Sep. 2018].
Rubemeyer, A., Noble, C., Hiltz IV, J., McKeague, J. and Wolfe, M. (2013). Capability Gap Assessment: Blending Warfighter Experience with Science Technical Report. [online] Dtic.mil. Available at: https://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a615538.pdf [Accessed 27 Sep. 2018].