You Decide Assignment
HS541: Health Service Systems

Chief Executive Officer, Kathy Ramirez
Address to the Board of Middlefield Hospital

As the Chief Executive Officer for the Middlefield Hospital, I am honored to be associated with a well-established and large tertiary facility which is well known in the community for providing high quality services. Middlefield Hospital has enjoyed this reputation for over 22 years and I am confident that we can continue to provide these services for many more years. Our facility offers many services that are needed in this community including inpatient and outpatient services. With that said, I am also aware that we are facing some difficult times right now. The opening of a new facility within close proximity to us has had an impact on our staffing, both in our physician and nursing populations. What are the reasons for this shift? What incentives are being offered that are not being offered at our facility? Why has the overall morale of our facility dropped significantly over that past 12 months? These are the type of questions we will explore after specific strategic steps have been implemented.

How we respond as a team to these issues will have a major impact on our future. The transformation that is currently underway for our facility which includes the professional healthcare staffing is a challenge for all of leadership to address. We cannot stop these changes from taking place. What we can do is embrace them and implement strategies that can enhance our facility. Thus the only recommendation I would like to propose focuses on the ability of us to work as a team to combat these issues. I recently read an excellent reference book entitled, “Organizational Behavior”. This book outlined key issues related to actions taken by a team of individuals and compared it to the actions of one individual. A quote from the resource stated, “Organizations today run on the foundation of teams and teamwork. Teams that achieve synergy bring out the best in their members in respect to performance, creativity, and enthusiasm”. (Organizational Behavior, p. 155)
Most of you know that I have been working in this industry for over 25 years and have faced similar difficulties with other facilities. I am aware of the magnitude of these difficulties as I am sure you are also. There are specific strategies to overcome the workforce shortages and to improve the overall employee morale that will be proposed and discussed in detail. In order to provide this information, I have reviewed key issues affecting our hospital and have interviewed a number of individuals but more data is indicated. An immediate step that will be taken will be the establishment of exit interviews. We need specific information on why staff members are leaving and I would like individuals from our Human Capital department to develop specific questions to gain information to the root cause of the voluntary terminations we are experiencing.
According to an article by Martha Frase-Blunt, entitled “Making exit interviews work: properly collected and analyzed data can provide valuable insight into employees' attitudes” in the journal, HR Magazine, exit interview has three purposes: to learn where the company can improve itself, to make sure employees leave feeling good about their service and, in some cases, [to encourage] the employee to stay under new circumstances”. This information will help us pinpoint the rationale why our employees are leaving.

Another immediate action that we will take is the formation of a communication committee involving employees and current board members for our facility. The responses should provide us with an in-depth analysis of how we view our workplace, both as a board member and as a frontline staff member. In an article published in 2002 by Sober and Sadler, entitled, “Improving Organizational Communication and cohesion in a health care setting through employee leadership” (Human Organization, 2002) the exchange of specific goals can be developed when we take the time to understand the perspective of our current employees and delve into their vision of what we can do to help our facility. Goals that we will focus on include: 1. Seek out the current issues and solutions from an employee’s point of view 2. Stimulate the growth of ideas and encourage innovation 3. Encourage the effective implementation of ideas by making recommendations to existing appropriate groups and committees 4. Open communication and build connectedness 5. Be accountable by effectively communicating outcomes of each council 6. Foster accountability by encouraging employees to share the outcomes of their suggestions with others

These goals will allow us the ability to remain focused on the outcomes that will help us in the best possible fashion. Once we have gathered the data that is needed to fully understand the issues surrounding our high attrition rate and our decrease in overall employee morale, we can begin to create the atmosphere of positivity that will help us execute additional strategies. Thank you for your attention and your willingness to work as a team.

REFERENCES:
Frase-Blunt, M. (2004). Making exit interviews work: properly collected and analyzed data can provide valuable insight into employees' attitudes. HR Magazine, 2004.
Schermerhorn, J.R., Hunt, J.G., Osborn, R.N., & Uhl-Bien, M. (2010). Organizational Behavior (11th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Sobo, E.J. & Sadler, B.L. (2002). Improving Organizational Communication and cohesion in a health care setting through employee leadership. Human Organization, 1 (3).
277-287.