Free Custom «Hospitals» Essay Paper

The major service that hospitals offer is health care; however, many hospitals offer teaching and research.  Research may include both clinical research, which involves patients, and laboratory research that does not involve patients. Hospital activities can be grouped into three main categories: clinical services-direct patient care, Administrative, which include engineering, housekeeping, financial and human resource, Allied health services that include social work, voluntary service, and prosthetics among others. At the top level, of the managerial ladder, the administrator, the associate administrator and the chief of staff operate as a team (Head& Scott, 1996). The chief of staff has line authority on all matters that may be termed as clinical, while allied services may be assigned to the chief of staff or the associate administrator. Besides, management responsibilities, health administrators are mandated with day-to-day running of the hospital, which includes duties like policymaking and management decisions and discussions.

The key areas in which every healthcare manager must focus on are:

Fiscal Management

To provide services to patients without exceeding the allocated budget, managers must have basic understanding of government and agency budget systems, a keen awareness on cost of medical equipment and supplies. Another requirement is knowledge on how to prepare the budget proposals, monitoring continuing hospital projects.

Personnel management

For effective management in this area, hospital administrators should have an up to date knowledge of government. In addition, agency personnel management requirements, as they relate to distinct groups, such as the Veterans Administration Department of Medicine and surgery, and the recognition of the needs of different individuals and groups and the ability of the hospital to cater  for the needs of each group.

Public relations

Any organization must create a favorable rapport with other hospitals and medical related fraternities, as well as the community at large.

Systematic Internal review

Hospitals mainly provide services; therefore, a high quality service must be delivered, and the degree to which it meets the required regulatory requirements. It is the work of the health care administrator to ensure that there are proper internal review questions, and that all the relevant activities of the hospital are in compliance.

Statement of the Problem

According to Goodall (2011), in the United States, non-physician administrators rather than physicians lead most hospitals. Waldman (2009) indicated that most non-physician chief executive officers (CEOs), who are experts in management, lack the necessary knowledge to manage medical problems. According to Avakian (2010), since early 2000s, physicians increasingly have served as leaders of health care organizations. Pavan and Gogeascoechea (2008) suggested that few physicians believe they are well prepared for the requirements of managerial roles. The traditional clinical training of physicians contrasts with the managerial training of administrators (Waldman, 2009). Managerial skill building is not well emphasized during physicians’ medical training (Littlefield, 2011).

Health care resource management requires a combination of abilities that balance the financial principles with societal health care needs (Littlefield, 2011). It is unclear as to whether the health care employees in organizations with physicians in leadership positions provide better care than health care employees of organizations without physician managers (Goeschel, Wachter, &Pronovost, 2010). The American College of Health Care Executives (2011) suggests that health care administrators have a fundamental responsibility to make the best use of available resources to deliver excellent patient care.

Significance of the Study

Managing a hospital requires pre-requite knowledge of managerial skills. Managing a hospital entails managing resources, which may at times; need prior knowledge in the medical field, this demand that the administrator has an educational background that relates to both medicine and managerial areas.

Revised Quantitative Problem Statement

The relationships between the physicians’ knowledge of medicine, managerial skills and health care organizations’ patient satisfaction level are described in this quantitative study.

Revised Quantitative Purpose Statement

The main objective  of this quantitative quasi-experimental research is to compare the patient satisfaction level, operation efficacy, and financial stability of hospitals managed by physician administrators versus hospitals, whose leaders are non-physician managers. The data will be obtained through a document review of public data sources of six large community hospitals located in the Central Florida. Data from three hospitals managed by a physician and three hospitals of similar size managed by non-physician administrators will be evaluated.

Quantitative Research Question

What is the relationship between physician and non-physician administrators on hospital performance?

Associated Null Hypothesis

Hospitals with physician chief executives do not perform better than those with non-physician administrators.

Associated Alternative Hypothesis

Hospitals with physician chief executives perform better than those with non-physician administrators.

Organization of the Study

This study will be done in three parts, where in the first part the topic of study will be introduced, and hospital administration discussed at length. It will also include the statement of the problem and the research questions and the hypotheses, as well as the significance of the study. The second part of this study will contain the knowledge gap that this study aims to fill. The third part will entail the written works of other scholars.