Organizational Competitive Advantages in Healthcare Institutions

Competitive advantage revolves around the company’s ability to identify and satisfy the client’s needs, what the competitor offers, and provides the customers with goods and services of their choice. The company has to clearly understand what the customers’ actual needs are in order to effectively address mutual interest issues. The aspect of sustainable competitive advantage is expected not just for companies but within healthcare institutions, as well. Today, healthcare institutions are expected to offer the highest quality of patient care. The mounting pressure is too much, especially, given the changes in population demographics and the introduction of new patient needs that are calling for advanced practice in health care. However, in their provision of high-quality care, health institutions are expected to control their costs while meeting increasing requirements for regulations. This paper analyses the issue of competitive advantage implementation within Maimonides Centre.

Competitive Advantage Strategy

The key things to the development of a competitive advantage within this organization are the satisfaction of both staff and patients. Since patients’ needs vary, while demanding fewer or more competent healthcare professionals, healthcare institutions are expected to constantly review their competitive advantage strategy. In order to ensure that the hospital manages its staff and patient satisfaction, there is an appointed hospital-wide committee that works hand in hand with departmental committees that is in charge of managing labor (Maimonides Medical Center, 2007). Each departmental committee’s work revolves around analyzing of problems and developing, implementing and sustaining solutions designed. Lasting solutions intended at sustaining high quality patient care outcomes. In order to ensure the involvement of the entire hospital staff, there is a non-staff committee to represent the needs of the subordinate staff to the healthcare management. For this organization, these committees have seen a tremendous improvement in the hospital’s quality of healthcare and staff productivity. Further, the committees have led to the establishment of a practice that is constantly changing to meet the demands of the ever-changing environment in healthcare (Maimonides Medical Center, 2007).

Reasons Why Committees to Evaluate Nursing Practice and Implement Sustainable Solutions Offer a Competitive Advantage

In order to improve the healthcare institution has focused on empowering its nurses by improving their responsibilities and at the same time recognizing them as autonomous (Paynton, 2008). The hospital-wide committee emphasizes that each staff is autonomous and has personal power and position power where appropriate. Therefore, each staff is viewed as having the capability to influence patients and other staff towards the attainment of high quality healthcare services. In order to be effective in their influencing capacity, healthcare professionals are expected to possess the right skills and knowledge that is relevant to others. The institution understands that for nurses, the greatest attributes of power are those linked to caring since it results to transformation and healing (Paynton, 2008).

Besides decentralization of power, the healthcare institution encourages each professional to freely have control over content of nursing practice, control of content of nursing practice, and control over competence of nursing practice (Manojlovich, 2007). Our institution management understands that providing nurses with control over content of practice. During their practice, nurses are expected to feel they are practicing in their area of expertise, which gives them the ability to achieve and retain autonomy and influence. By allowing nurses to act freely within their profession, the healthcare institution manages to promote accountability, collaboration, and teamwork. Each staff ensures that they always do what is expected of them and always reach out to colleagues for consultation or clarification of issues prior to implementing them (Paynton, 2008). In case of healthcare issues calling for advanced knowledge, the departmental committee identifies them and holds training sessions and seminars. Additionally, staff is provided with information on available competitive courses for them to enrol. The management openly encourages trainings and courses by staff since the more autonomous they are, the more the nurses identify with the profession and the better decisions they make during their association with patients. Additionally, autonomous nurses completely understand the delicate patient trends and cues and often arise to act on them properly to promote patient care. This way, nurses manage to appropriately identify the appropriate cause of action and function effectively by understanding and controlling all activities linked to the job at hand (Manojlovich, 2007).

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In addition to allowing nurses to practice their content, the management encourages nurses’ participation within the nursing context (Zivile, 2008). Participation ensures that the nurses are more meaningfully involved in the running of the institution. Allowing nurses to work in an environment where their issues are addressed results in their feeling of being appreciated and empowered to work towards the highest quality of care and patient outcomes. When control over context is coupled with control over content, nurses, especially nurse leaders, manage to influence other nurses on their conduct, relationships with each other, and promote high quality patient care (Paynton, 2008).

In order to promote a nursing environment that encourages nurses to utilize their professional skills, the institution’s management ensures that all nurses are selected through competence assessment (Zivile, 2008). Additionally, the institution encourages continued knowledge development through education. This is necessary given that poorly educated nurses contribute to powerlessness, which is a serious disadvantage to the institution, especially, in organizational politics. Conversely, highly competent professional provides transformative impact on the lives of patients. Towards the goal of having competent nurses, the management puts more emphasis on expertise and professional preparation for optimal contribution towards patient care. Optimal nursing contribution towards patient care implies that the nursing environment is rewarding hence, making the healthcare institution a choice for most students (Manojlovich, 2007). Additionally, promoting nurses competence has the benefits of low turnover rates as it encourages retention. For the patients, where staff nurses have control over patient care, most patients reveal satisfaction with care provided to them.

My Perspective of Improving Competitive Advantage of the Institution

So far, the institution fails to distinguish between the roles of nurse leader and the roles of the departmental and institutional committees (Manojlovich, 2007). As a leader, I would emphasis on commitment to leadership since leaders are drivers to cultural change. Besides demands on advanced practice to meet patient needs, healthcare institutions are expected to adapt a cultural sensitive healthcare environment (Doty, Koren, & Sturla, 2008). Towards this end, it is apparent that with leaders who are committed to cultural change, it is possible to deliver high quality care to diverse patient population satisfactorily. Besides offering training on improving nursing competence, the institution would focus on ensuring that all staff understand and work towards promoting a culturally sensitive environment (Paynton, 2008). Additionally, diversity sensitivity works hand in hand with the encouragement of an organizational structure that has a decentralized decision making and where staffs are free to make informed decisions about patient care. The promotion of a leadership led diversity sensitive health institution ensures that nurses embrace all patients and informatively offer the highest patient care for the best patient care outcomes.

Additionally, emphasis on committed leadership ensures that employees remain motivated especially through transformational leadership which results to effective satisfaction of both patient and nursing needs (Smith, 2011). Nurses’ satisfaction would mean less absenteeism attributed to reasons such as burnout. Through transformational leadership, healthcare professionals will remain informed on new responsibilities expected from them to adapt to changes in the nursing environment. As a result, nurses are motivated by appealing to higher ideas and moral values given that the leader is acting from deeply internalized ideas and values. As a result, nurses act to sustain the greater good of the institution, patient and other professionals other than acting driven towards own interests. Additionally, nurses act towards sustaining a supportive environment with shared responsibilities. Moreover, transformational leadership ensures that nurses identify the right ways to develop and exercise effective power over content, context, and competence since leaders provide gender specific empowerment that explains how power develops from relations especially by women who use empathy and empowerment to foster nurturance and growth (Manojlovich, 2007).

Conclusion

The discussion in this paper emphasizes that competitive advantage arises primarily from healthcare professionals given their skills and capabilities. Within the healthcare institution, there is very high competition for competent healthcare professionals for guaranteed patient satisfaction. This facility encourages staff satisfaction through decentralization of power that allows nurses to control their content, context, and competence in nursing practice. The facility revolves around encouraging nurses to participate in the decision making, freedom to act based on their skills and freedom to develop their competence and expertise. By ensuring that the institution has competent committees to ensure that problem solving amongst the nurses is closer to service delivery staff nurses participation is improved. Staffs nurses manage to freely identify the problems with patients, analyze them, generate potential solutions, and select the best solution and plan for each patient. This becomes possible through the promotion of staff control over context, content, and competence. However, the institution has to strike a balance between the roles of healthcare leaders and the formed committees to ensure that transformational leadership thrives.