Free Custom «Strategic Planning To Develop Health Care» Essay Paper

Human Resource in Healthcare

In many of the health care systems across the globe, there has been rise especially in the human resource management sector. This is one of the three health system inputs principles. The other main inputs are capital and consumables. In this case, we will tackle human resource management in health care especially its effect in the United State of America. According to Kabene 2006, Health care human resource can be defined as the different responsibility that is based on clinical and non-clinical staff that is meant for public and individual health intervention. as human resource management is one of the key system input in the hospital, its function and performance is based on the benefits that are derived from skills, knowledge and motivation that the health care personnel when delivering services.

No matter how much it is required to balance human and physical resources, it is also very important to ensure that appropriate mix between the health care givers and promoters are maintained to ensure that this system works. As there is great difference between the health promoters and the caregivers, it is therefore very important that human capital and physical capital be handled differently to ensure that they are compatible with the health care practices. This is because, the human resources and health care services are so complex and thus require more examination and study. This is because the health care service affects the customer directly and any mismanagement caused can lead lose of life which irreversible.

Most of the health facilities are the consumables like drugs and disposable equipments that are always in the rise making their cost to change always drastically. This may make especially publically funded health care experience problems in the hiring of the personnel. There can also be a problem in maintaining the health practitioners. This is due to the expenditures that are taken through the hospital making human resource management to ensure that they are able to balance appropriately workforce supply in the healthcare centre and the need of the practitioners to ensure good service delivery. Therefore, human resource requires that practitioners should be provided by adequate materials to ensure that their practices are effective and efficient.

Functions of human resource in the health care

There are different question that the health care human resource management encounters during their duty. Such questions that arise are about the size, distribution and the composition of the health care work force, training issues, labor turnover and the economic development depending with their environment (Kabene, 2006). Demographic and economic effect towards their functions is another normal question that people will like to know how the HRM tackles in the healthcare setting.

The size variation as well as distribution and composition of the health care labor are of great concern to the human resources. This shows the available health workers that are in certain environment thus helping HRM to cater for issues concerning the recruitment and maintenance of the labor to ensure service delivery consistency (Kabene, 2006). Te number of the labor force in a certain place determines the capacity of the service delivery and interventions that should be considered by the human resources. The human resources will be able to consider such factors as cultural practices oaf a certain area, social demographic and economic factors to help them determine health service demands and in planning.

Training of the personnel is another paramount function that the human resource in a health care service considers. It is essential for the human resources to integrate the aspect of skills and training level to ensure that personnel are motivated as well as given right skills for proper service delivery. There is need for the human resource management to incorporate the skills of their personnel with in-services training to ensure that they are able to meet current and future health care challenges. This is because, properly trained health personnel are competent in their work and they are compatible to any health care system.
Another function that the health care human resource has to deal with is the issue of labor turn. Health care personnel are susceptible to migration whenever their needs are not met.

This should be tackled by human resource to ensure that they maintain consistency in the service delivery. According to Kabene, 2006, the research that has been done globally pertaining the migration of the health care practitioners, they are a similar pattern that appears where they tend to migrate towards the urban area. This movement of labor creates imbalances especially to the rural areas. Therefore, this call for proper human resource planning to ensure that service delivery is delivered after all as labor turn over is inevitable but can only be controlled. Therefore, work force planning and such incentives as housing of the workers, good infrastructure and job rotation are paramount in pursuit of minimizing this aspect. Therefore, human resource should ensure that they plan appropriately incase of health care migration.

The economic level development in a country is another aspect that the human resource should ascertain in their management. There has been a correlation between the economic development of the country and the way that the health care human resource of that country carries out their planning and eventually their management. The health care human resource in developed countries where the gross development product per capita is high, tend to invest more in the health facilities thus making the human resource to have better planning for health service delivery.

Health care benchmark

Patient care can be improved by use of benchmarking. Since the clinical bench making initiative was launched, a number of hospitals have shown how the idea has helped in addressing qualitative improvements in the care given to the patients in the health care setting. A good example is the mental health benchmark that provides a framework to monitor mental health care standards. This benchmark provide a platform that enables patients and their caretakers to participate in coming up with better practices that are from comparison and sharing. Benchmark helps the general hospital to be able to deal with aspects that have been constantly ignored in care provision. These aspects are seen to have no or less significance outside mental health care specialization. Yet in the real sense, their significance is unlimited (Department of Health. 2001).

Benchmark approach

To ensure that the mental hospital reduces the cases that have been rampant in general hospital, Wiltshire Mental Partnership NHS Trust -Avon and Wiltshire Hospital Bath NHS Trust in conjunction with Royal United Bath NHS Trust came together and together identified various practices that were appropriate to curb areas of poor practice sin the mental hospital (Department of Health. 2001). This was meant to see how cases that have been in increase with mental incapacitated people could be reduced. Such cases are self-harm and suicidal tendencies, depression, psychosis, acute confusion and alcohol dependence. Therefore, they formed groups that would come up with suggestions that were to be implemented to curb this.

Therefore, to ensure that the essence of care toolkit was effectively accomplished, the following was supposed to be worked through. There was established benchmark comparison group that was supposed to discuss the above named cases. They were also required to come up with the best practices and compare them against each group. They developed implementation plan for practices improvement as well as disseminating examples for good practice. These groups were designated by the hospital management to work on their behalf.

Benchmark results

The group identified that they have to do something to suppress the occurrence of the mostly encountered mental health problem. They decided that they have to develop a more comprehensive risk assessment to the patients who are prone to these common problems. They therefore devised intervention guidance assessment sheets for staff for planning and providing care to them. These sheets were put in place to complement the existing care guidance. Each sheet was developed with the right language which will make all the personnel to understand.

The benchmarking group had to create awareness to all the members who were to be involved . The practices catered for all the regions depending with the effect that could have caused the mental health care problems. After implementation of the benchmark process, it was discovered the rate at which each problem was at that time started dropping as shown by the table below.

Comparison of an organization's performance against the benchmark

Results of problem analysis in mental health care hospital for a period of five years after benchmark implementation cases No. of patient per 1000 (before) No. of patient per 1000 (after) % decrease self harm 350 120 23 suicide tendencies 140 58 8.2 depression 288 97 19.1 psychosis 198 105 9.3 acute confusion 457 257 20 alcohol dependence 654 405 24.9 Conclusion
After implementation of the benchmark analysis for five years, a big improvement was experience. Al the cases dropped significantly thus helping the mental health human resources management to have a base on how to continue improving their services.

Nevertheless, honesty and constructive feedback was paramount to ensure that the shown decrease continues. Involvement of patient and cares actively to the program was also cited to be very important as well as supporting staff through the whole process. Every body was to be urged to focus on developing solutions in the process of meeting the benchmark process.