Healthcare Organizational Structure Dynamic and Complex

Question: Discuss about the Healthcare Organizational Structure Dynamic and Complex. Answer: Introduction: Healthcare organizations are dynamic and complex and require the managers to play an array of roles that includes leadership, coordination and supervision of employees. The complexity and scope of the healthcare organizations are great that requires the following of an organizational strategy. The organizational structure should be so designed so as to support the management for organizing and coordinating the resources and workforce for achieving the agreed strategy, vision and mission of the organization (Carayon et al., 2014). Sydney Community Hospital (SCH) has a bureaucratic (functional) organizational structure that is functional and traditional and the management team is intended to adopt an alternative organizational structure to accommodate the growing needs of the community. This assignment will discuss and compare the existing and alternative organizational structure that can be beneficial for SCH to provide the healthcare of highest quality to the community by improving t he collaboration and communication across the interdisciplinary teams for resource utilization. SCH presently follows the bureaucratic organizational structure that has a functional and traditional hierarchical structure. This structure essentially follows a pyramidal command structure for the organization of the various work activities. It has a high degree of formality in its operational strategies and is very organized. Since SCH is a 110-bed community hospital, it has several departments like specialty care, emergency care, surgical and acute medical for serving the local community (Harper, 2015). In the bureaucratic organizations like SCH have organizational charts in each of its departments and the decision making process involves an organized process under a strict control and command structure. This makes the hospital highly efficient, fair and orderly. Advantages of this type of organizations include the fact that the top-level managers are expected to exercise greater control over the strategy decisions of the organization and this makes the decision making the time s horter as lesser people are involved in the process. Best practices and standardization are the forte of bureaucratic organizations which ensures that the work design is effective and efficient to complete the healthcare activities within the set deadline (Pauget Wald, 2013). Since SCH has a number of departments, this type of organizational structure is ideal to exert control over their activities to provide healthcare services of the highest quality. Although this organizational structure has several benefits, it also has several limitations. Bureaucratic organizational structures are known to discourage innovation and creativity in the organization since the manager alone cannot generate the strategic idea range that can be possible in an interdisciplinary and large group. Even if the manager is highly ingenious, this type of structure cannot satisfy the frontline employees in such a rigid environment that increases the rate of employee turnover (Hesselink et al., 2013). Such ri gid controls also prevent the organization to change and adapt to the ever-changing conditions in the market and therefore, the present organizational structure is not beneficial for SCH considering the current healthcare environment and the changing health needs of the population of the community. For the new health services of SCH, matrix organizational structure will be the best-suited structure for facilitating the achievement of the new mission and strategic goals of the organization. Matrix organizational structure sets up the structure of the organization in the form of matrix or grids for the reporting relationships rather than following the conventional hierarchy system (Ashkenas et al., 2015). The complexity and size of the health organization determine the type of organizational structure and since SCH is believed to include a large population of the community with its retirement villages and nursing homes, this type of organizational structure will be the best fit. Matrix organizational structure combines the product and functional structures and sets the practice of managing the individual specialties with multiple reporting lines ((Eppinger Browning, 2012). This is also referred to as the cross business group type or the cross functional management that are very much unlike the business units that are traditionally vertical. One striking characteristic of this type of organization is that the individuals with specific working skills are pooled together for working on health specialties and are controlled by multiple managers. There are specific advantages of this type of organizational structure that starts from the fact that the resource coordination becomes optimum. This type of organizational structure allows for supervisors and managers to specifically focus on their specialty domains (Goetsch Davis, 2014). Functional supervisors are endowed with the responsibility of focusing on the activities of managing, training and hiring employees in their respective healthcare domains whereas the supervisors of the individual healthcare and hospital projects can concentrate on achieving their individual and project goals to meet the mission and vision of the hospital. A comparison between the key lines of responsibility and authority between the two organizational structures will reveal the efficiency of the new structure over the previous structure for achieving the overall organizational goals. The overall strategic goal of the new organization is the development of multidisciplinary and high performing teams within the specialist services for delivering patient-centered care that is responsive and effective for the changing health needs of the community (Scott Davis, 2015). The current structure offers tight and rigid constraints, policies and procedures that are reluctant to change or adapt. Compared to this, the matrix organizational structure does not place the employees in isolated functional areas and lets them to have constant contact with the multidisciplinary teams by participating in the project teams. This lets the employees develop wider skill sets that would have not possible in a bureaucratic organizational structure. Since bureau cratic structures make the job more specialized, it tends to repeat the job activities that tend to breed dissatisfaction among the employees (Hatch Cunliffe, 2013). This tends to make the employees feel passive and helpless and they tend to be indifferent to the goals of the company without the supervisors paying attention to their concerns. On the contrary, in the matrix organizational structures, the fluidity of communication is maintained as the employees are in constant contact with each other and also with the staff members from other departments and specialties. In the bureaucratic structure, the business lacks from lack of responsibility and accountability of the management which is a serious issue in healthcare (Wilensky, 2015). However, the matrix structure involves self management of the employees and increases their decision making abilities, which is a crucial aspect in healthcare. This will certainly benefit the SCH if the employees are more responsible towards their duty and the community. Although matrix organizational structure is the commonly used structure in healthcare, it has some advantages and disadvantages that can be related to the changing environment of healthcare and the strategic goal of the new organization to achieve for the patients, carers and the community. The prime advantage of this structure is that it helps in the efficient information exchange (Butler Wilson, 2015). Various specialties work in close proximity that promotes the opportunities of frequent communication to resolve complex healthcare issues. This fastens the process of decision making and increases the productivity of the employees. This is in alignment with the strategic goal of SCH as it aims to develop high performance multidisciplinary teams with specialty services for providing responsive and effective patient centered care. A democratic leadership style is followed in the matrix organizational structure that incorporates the opinions of the team members. This account for the i nflux of valuable information for patient care and this is much in alignment with the mission of SCH that is to provide the highest quality healthcare by partnering with the community, carers and patients. This is possible only when there is a well fledged communication between the employees with their managers. The disadvantage includes the fact that it can result in the formation of internal complexities (Rothaermel, 2015). Employees tend to receive command from two or more supervisor and this makes patient care activities critical, especially during the emergency conditions. This might go against the vision statement of SCH of providing world class healthcare facilitates for the community if the staff members get confused about carrying out the orders of their superiors. Moreover, this structure is quite expensive in its maintenance as it requires double management in certain conditions which involves excess salaries that strain the resources. This will affect the strategic goal of SCH as weaker multidisciplinary teams and specialist services will be formed out of strained resources. Considering both the advantages and the disadvantages of the structure, it can be stated that the benefits of the structure are favorable for the changing healthcare environment and can aid in the strategic goal of SCH to increase the number of specialty services with the provision of community clinics. Organizational structure in the hospitals helps in the efficient management of the various specialties that helps in providing better care services in alignment with their organizational mission. Since SCH has the mission and vision of providing healthcare services of world class standards, matrix organizational structure will help the organization to achieve its strategic goals and meet its mission and vision statements. Aggregation of the departments and individuals will allow for multidisciplinary and patient centered care through well communicated and managed healthcare professionals in partnership with the patients, carers and the community. References Ashkenas, R., Ulrich, D., Jick, T., Kerr, S. (2015).The boundaryless organization: Breaking the chains of organizational structure. John Wiley Sons. Butler, R., Wilson, D. C. (2015).Managing voluntary and non-profit organizations: Strategy and structure. Routledge. Carayon, P., Wetterneck, T. B., Rivera-Rodriguez, A. J., Hundt, A. 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