Healthcare managers hold within their ability the opportunity for the company to grow and prosper. Managers must be able to anticipate, recognize and plan for changes in the internal and external environment. The change will happen and for this reason, healthcare managers must actively stay involved in the process that identifies change and modifies the company’s activity to take advantage of change.
The external threats that face home health care are competition, government policies, economic conditions, demographic factors, and technological changes. Internal environment includes the organizational culture and structure, and physical assets and cash flow.
Competition to care for patients in the long term setting come from long-term care facilities, there is three of them in Tacoma WA, and several more in the Seattle area. The biggest provider is Kindred Healthcare. Currently, in the Tacoma Washington area, there are 19 home health agencies. Nine of these organizations are for-profit organizations. The others are tied to major non-profit hospitals. However, there are only six companies in the state of Washington that provide home ventilator services, and only two is located in the Tacoma area. Three of them are located in the Seattle area. Seattle is one hour north of Tacoma. The last one is located three hours south in Vancouver WA.
Government policies control quality initiatives and the minimum standard required to provide license care to patients. The largest provider of insurance for the healthcare industry in the U.S. government is Medicare and Medicaid. In 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Medicare and Medicaid programs they never planned for the life expectancies of Americans today and the chronic health conditions they would encounter. In 2010 President Barack Obama passed the Affordable Care Act in this Act is