Key Features of the Strategic Plan

Modern lifestyle of worldwide citizens have undoubtedly enhanced the pace of life but simultaneously it has also made the social structure a little more complicated and alienated which has further led to the emerging need of new healthcare strategies. The ratio of elderly falling has increased over the years and so has the ratio of health issues in young generation. The report is going to highlight the healthcare strategies of Glenferrie Private Hospital in Australia as it has shown significant growth in last ten years.

Glenferrie Private Hospital was established in 2004 and the hospital was primarily operated by the group called Ramsay Health Care. The hospital has certain visions like they want to be recognised as a hospital of people’s choice and a centre of excellence. They also want to achieve optimal return as their investments and they want to provide personalised high quality care to such an extent that their service becomes capable to make a relevant different in terms of people’s hospital experiences (glenferrieprivate.com.au, 2018). They value teamwork, community contribution, pursuit of excellence and high respect to the individual. They follow Ramsay health care values and its principles are that people must care for people to enjoy and succeed in work; they also build constructive relationships to achieve positive outcomes.

The hospital is also different from other private hospitals in Australia because of its decentralised management that allows the managers to build a productive relationship with the doctors. They have open door policy for their staffs and medical practitioners. ‘The Ramsay Way’ is their special culture which further differentiates them from similar industries as they strive to evaluate their performance record through continuous formal feedbacks and customer surveys. They offer specialist service in the segments of wrist and hand surgery, ophthalmology, maxillofacial and oral surgery, orthopaedic surgery in ankle, hips, foot, knee and shoulders, plastic surgery, sports injuries, pain diagnosis and so on. Radiology, day surgery, physiotherapy and anesthetics are some of the specials activities of Glenferrie Private Hospital and these activities distinguish it from potential industries of same stature.

There are various private hospitals in Australia and Glenferrie Private Hospital is one of the topmost rank holders. Queensland Mater Health Services has also topped the list of Australian private hospitals based on the survey of comprehensive patient satisfaction conducted by Medibank Private Fund. The survey covered 140 hospitals and collected 22,668 responses which literally covered all the aspects starting from pre-admission to discharge and other follow ups (Greenfield et al. 2016, P. 65). Another survey named the 2010 Hospital Experience Survey also announced Longueville Private Hospital as a potential competitor in health industry as they are accredited by the Australian Council of Healthcare Standards (ACHS).

Competitive Analysis

These hospitals are significant competitors of Glenferrie Private Hospital because of the unique strategies and guidelines they choose to follow while operating their services. Queensland Mater Health Services prioritises physician relationships and consumer engagements the most which has resulted in the automated safety standard of their patients. They are willing to bring the expertise and compassionate care together for improving community health records. Mater Education and Mater Research are some of the main collaborative industries of this hospital which has fostered their cutting edge tools and techniques in terms of surgical and medical procedures. They provide care to almost 500,000 patients in each year and these patients are encouraged to provide positive contribution in their healthcare journey by providing feedbacks to improve the service standards (mater.org.au, 2018). Patient centred care is their utmost strategic priority which has made the hospital achieves the highest rank in Australian healthcare industries. Scale Innovation is another unique strategy of this hospital as they use Medical Tricorder and Augmented Reality in their operating systems. These technological interventions have paved the way of simple diagnosis and easy tracking of chronic diseases.

Longueville Private Hospital is another major competitor of Glenferrie Private Hospital as this institution prioritises affordability and culture the most as financial sustainability is one of the most important strategy according to these professionals. They choose to provide betterment into the community health as they think about the entire community and not just those people who can afford a high quality of care. This perspective of this hospital has helped them to increase their median unit value significantly by $7478000 in 2017 (longuevilleprivate.com.au, 2018). Occupation standard is also significantly higher in this hospital compared to its relative industries and it is because of the unique technology they implement for treating patients. The hospital uses Nanotechnology to make paralysed people walk and treat severe injuries in spinal cord and treat patient who have had several strokes.

Figure 1: Business models of healthcares

(Source: Liyanage et al. 2015, p. 1975)

Queensland Mater Health Services uses marketplace model in order to reform their sheer velocity which enabled the disaggregation of somephysical assets in time and space. This model helps and industry to create digital platforms in terms of goods, information or services and these components make the service nature amenable to matching, pricing or exchange (Palmer et al. 2018, p. 299). As Queensland Mater Health Services uses his model, they have been able to differentiate among nature of service provider, nature of service and reviewing the trust. Medical devices like contracted utilities in store and description of bio skills or ratings, support gear and crowd sourced safety nets are also identified by them in this model usage.

Business Models of Healthcares

Longueville Private Hospital uses Curation Model in their business operations as they prioritises on trust as it is the singular reason behind accelerated transformation of their economy. Consumerization is the powerhouse of this model because it focuses on price, geographic accessibility, choice, and trust and collaboration together (Allton et al. 2018, p. 78). This model has helped the hospital to eliminate any middleman who can create hindrance in the cost saving service of a patient. Networked devices and shared resources have also encouraged the use of Tele health in this model which has further enhanced the service nature in Longueville Private Hospital.

The Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record has is the major national initiation of Australian Government and PCEHR Model has been greatly implemented in Glenferrie Private Hospital. This model is cost effective and helps the hospital management to track its medical records and send it to relevant territory or federal bodies (Hanna et al. 2017, p. 42). The value proposition to healthcare consumers has been enhanced by the use of this model and Glenferrie is gradually improving its resourcing process and cost assumptions to deliver a relevant innovation towards the betterment of community health.

Hence, it is established that Glenferrie Private Hospital has shown noticeable progress over the years and their shifts to outcome and margin management from revenue cycle management has helped them embracing a new consumer base model in service. Although, its competitors use significant business models and has been achieving success in a better rate than them, still the competitive advantage in Glenferrie does not cease to exist.

Glenferrie Private Hospital has shown significant growth in past 10 years and its financing models, value oriented care, behavioural health, IT Systems, patient centered care ratio, acquisition and consolidation rate, billing collection and payer-provider integration have been increasing potentially from 2014. The hospital has Glenferrie Radiology Department and Glenferrie Sports and Spinal Clinic Department which are the most specialized arena of this institution. They have a special Discharge Planning Program for their patients which are the key trend of this industry. Veterans Affairs, Patient information booklet and private charter for patients are some of the main operating condition of this industry which has been resourcing its improvement over the years.

Figure 2: Management growth

(Source: medibank.com.au, 2018)

Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 Australia is implemented in Glenferrie Private Hospital. The hospital industries in Australia nearly generate 10% greenhouse gas emission and Glenferrie has adopted carbon footprint technology to reduce the effect of carbon emission in healthcare industry. Glenferrie has followed the guidelines of The Australian Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory the rate of carbon emission has reduced by 3% in this industry (Wiedmann, 2017, p. 296). Carbon footprint technology has evoked the usage of renewable energy sources in hospitals so that carbon credit ratio decreases. Glenferrie has implemented this technology in their hospital and significantly improved the use of technologically advanced equipments while operating patients. They have implemented genome sequencing in their radiology department which has given rise to a newly structured patient safety and quality control framework.

Management Growth

Figure 3: Expansion growth

(Source: medibank.com.au, 2018)

The hospital has also shown potential growth in the organic growth segment which arose by 69% and the joint venture partnerships arose by 50%. Mergers and acquisitions were also observed to be increasing by 31% and 51% more than previous years (medibank.com.au, 2018). Glenferrie Private Hospital follows Ramsay Principle and it undergoes the accreditation procedure of the National Standards for Safety and Quality in Health Care. These trends of this industry have been witnessing the potential growth of Glenferrie management and they have also provided authentic evidences to the structural modifications of the hospital.

Balance between efficiency and care quality: Glenferrie Private Hospital has been facing several issues in terms of their business ethics in maintaining a balance between service efficiency and quality care. The management of this hospital was efficient in their service but in the process of operating they were being extravagant and was losing track of quality care. A high quality care was provided by this hospital and the usage of technologically advanced equipments was somehow being cost effective which created hindrance in providing care to the mediocre background patients (Nilsagård et al. 2015, p. 95). The economic background of each citizen is not the same and in order to be efficient in their service, Glenferrie management was overlooking the details of financial stability of patients. This ethical issue somehow declined the growth of their service but they soon overcame it by the modification of organisational policy and quality frameworks.

Figure 4: Ethical issues

(Source: Lennox et al. 2015, p. 33)

Improvement in care accessibility: Providing the fundamental care and basic medical treatment to the civilised society should be the utmost objective of any healthcare setting. However, in the era of globalisation the usage of technological equipments somehow declined the service growth rate in Glenferrie Private Hospital. The management was not being able to provide sufficient care to the older citizens and thus they were being partial in their service. The Aged Care Act 1997 is implemented in Glenferrie Private Hospital because this act provides guidelines to bring a sustainable system to the ageing population of Australia so that they have more choice and easy potions for care accessing in healthcare settings (careguidance.com.au, 2018).

Building a sustainable workforce for future: The workforce of Glenferrie Private Hospital is efficient to provide quality care but in terms of modern changes in lifestyle the severity of chronic illness has surpassed previous records. Glenferrie management was not being able to provide compassionate staffs and efficient counsellors to its patients and that is why even after being cured they were not recovering from the post traumatic situation of a surgery. Better Discharge Planning Program is the new initiative of this hospital which helped them to provide a better trained workforce who will be sustainable in their future growth.

Environmental Sustainability

Conclusion 

At the end of the reprt it can be concluded that Glenferrie Private Hospital is at a potential stage of providing structured healthcare service. It does have slight issues in its management and ethics but with little ramping up of policies and procedures this can lead to the ultimate growth of the industry which will be historically significant in entire Australia. The hospital has also witnessed the growth of operating service due to the transformations in organisational policies but the business models which are used by its competitive industries can also be a threat to its growing structure. However, Glenferrie also uses constructive and sustainable business model which is supported by the Australian government and so it is liable to bring productive result in the operating service in future. 

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