Importance of Transparency in Management of Healthcare Organizations

 

 

 

Importance of Transparency in Management of Healthcare Organizations

Transparency is a way of doing something whereby others can clearly see the action undertaken without any hidden motives. This is through communication and being ready to be responsible for ones doing and also be open for others suggestions.

Running a successful organization is a challenging task. Transparent leadership is the idea behind running successful organization. The society holds healthcare organizations with high regard when it comes to service delivery, thus there is the need to promote transparency, which is key to proper organization functionality. The level of transparency exhibited by a given organization with regards to its customers is essential in determining its success in the society.

Leadership in this industry requires a certain level of transparency for it to be deemed effective and successful. Just like in other organizations, two groups of leadership form health care organizations: chief executive officer with other superior managers and the overriding body. When these two governing bodies do not work together as a result of lack of transparency, the goals and objectives of the health care organization will not be achieved. Hence, the results will be catastrophic as the healthcare organizations are trusted to provide quality healthcare and save human lives (Finkler, Kovner, & Jones, 2007). Leaders in these healthcare organizations are the only ones with the capability to ensure that the quality and safety of healthcare provided by the organization is at its best. The leaders are able to achieve this by instilling a culture of safety and quality to the medical practitioners and personnel, providing services that meet patients’ needs, ensuring that the medical staff and medical practitioners are highly competent, performing evaluations, and implementing strategies to improve performance on the part of the medical staff. The governing body promotes transparency among leaders in healthcare organizations by ensuring that the chief executive officers and the senior managers work together towards a common goal (Cohn & Hough, 2008). This, as a result, motivates the leaders to invest in processes that lead to the provision of safe and quality healthcare. Good relations among these leaders proves beneficial in cases of disasters as time taken to resolve issues with the leaders working together  is short and resumption to normal healthcare provisions will be swift.

Governments monitor health care providers to safeguard the interests of the patients and ensure that high standards of health care are maintained. It is in line with this process that the departments charged with the responsibilities of monitoring the state of healthcare service provided; the collected information is then made accessible to the general public. The eminence of the information collected about a particular organizations structure will depend on the openness of the organization itself and the quality of its organization. Access to information is critical to the success of healthcare policies. Patients mostly seek information about an organization’s price and quality of services. Organizational culture plays a significant role in building trust among the patients and the medical staff at large. When clear procedures for accessing information about an organization are in place, the consumers consider it a sign of confidence on the part of the organization’s management (Hammaker & Tomlinson, 2010). If consumers are confident with the services they receive from an organization, they have the freedom to present their grievances incase of shortfalls. Patients always demand value for their money. They will readily seek alternatives incase a given service provider fails to reach their expectations. When it comes to health there is no compromise. People’s lives depend on it. (Gruen, 2005).

Good governance ensures that all decisions in the healthcare organization follow rules and regulations. As a result of good leadership, information is directly reachable to the parties concerned. This also leads to the information provided are in a format that is easily understandable by the medical staff. In the occurrence of conflict within the leadership body, transparency in governance ensures the governing body and the leaders of the medical staff work together to state in writing conflicts of interest among leaders that could affect the quality of healthcare provided in hospitals (Christensen & Lægreid, 2007). The governing bodies as a result of transparency develop policies that dictate how conflicting interests among leaders should be addressed. This curbs conflicts significantly and promotes peaceful relations among the leaders. This, as a result, has a ripple effect that trickles down the chain of command to the medical practitioners leading to improved medical care provided to the patient. The governing body is responsible for ensuring that the medical staff communicates regularly. This ensures that the leaders discuss factors affecting the hospital and the patients. Transparency exhibited by the governing body promotes civil communication among the leaders, staff, and patients in the hospitals. Communication among all the branches in an organization is essential. It ensures that medical emergencies are handled in a timely manner as every second counts when trying to save a human life. Effective communication in the organization as a result of transparency ensures that the policies induced by management are enforced accordingly, setbacks in the policies addressed, and corrections made on time. Communication ensures that when medical stock crucial to performing medical procedures runs out, the concerned faculty addresses the issue in time (Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services).

Successful health care organizations engage the community in their plans and services. They have the responsibility of consulting with the local community about their health and healthcare needs. The leaders of these organizations should ensure that specific initiatives and policy instruments are designed to focus on community engagement. In respect of engagement with the local community, the organizations are expected to make careful assessment of local needs and use their power to ensure that they provide high quality care that is responsive. They should ensure that they conduct this in a transparent manner as the local community holds them responsible for their actions and decisions (Hammaker & Tomlinson, 2010). These organizations should work with local authorities, voluntary organizations and any other relevant local strategic agencies to come up with agreements on how to better the health and welfare of the local people. To be effective, the organizations need to keep in touch with the views of all the local residents. The organization’s staff should reach out to the minority or disadvantaged groups who are rarely heard and often-ignored .To boost the local people’s confidence, the organization should step in when the locals find themselves stranded in one way or the other. This might be in form of financial constraints, technical assistance, technology, and even mentorship on leadership and criteria to use. Local communities should be engaged in the preparation and delivery of health services that involve community outreach programs from beginning to end. Once the process is completed, there should be feedback from the information gathered. The feedback mechanism should be programmed from the start, to reduce chances of stalling the project or the program and outline how the information will be disseminated to the organization and the local community. Good community engagement policies and programs have several characteristics. These are clarity of purpose, a clearly defined community profile, identified leadership, specified objectives, an arrangement for commitment, an enrollment approach, and vigilantly selected ways for encouraging participation. In addition, awareness to issues of compensation, an achievable timetable, attention to competence and capital and preparation of community members and professional employees are vital. Cultural awareness, consensus construction, a communications plan, an arrangement for checking the process and results, evaluation and propagation of the outcomes are also essential. Health organizations that engage the local communities in their activities build a relationship that guides how they offer their services and conform to new standards and conditions when the occasion presents itself (Acton, 2012).

Ineffective communication is one of the leading causes of medical errors as a result of improper medical diagnosis of patients. Proper medical care is pricy hence not affordable to all the members of the society. Constant medical checkups are associated with the rich and affluent people in the society. Therefore, there is the necessity to conduct proper medical diagnosis on patients due to adverse repercussions to the patients and families in terms of financial constraints and stress. Poor communication due to lack of transparency between medical professionals and patients is very common. The use of technical terms and jargon by the medical practitioners when addressing patients is the leading cause of ambiguity resulting in ineffective communication (Agard, 2010). Breakdowns in communication in healthcare organizations occur as a result of external stimuli, such as human factors distractions, interruptions, time pressures, and workloads. To achieve effective communication, communication skills have to be improved at all levels of management within the healthcare organization hence promote transparency.(Lewis, March 29, 2010).

The competitive nature of the environment and its dynamism makes the leaders of health organization to employ strategies that work best for the long-standing and temporary goals of the organization. Good strategies should cater for the service variety, patient needs, and the patient access. These are the main dimensions along which the organization’s tradeoffs are explicitly brought out. The quality of the tradeoffs can hence be assessed in terms of whether the strategy put in place is designed for critical success factors of the organization in its environment or whether they are highly focused on the organization’s goals.(Hernandez, 2009).

Just like in any other organization, the organizational culture of a healthcare organization will define the structure of the organization. Organizational structure refers to the beliefs and values that a given organization has had for a long time, the beliefs of the staff in that organization and the foreseen value of their work that will influence their behavior and attitudes towards their work. The leaders of these organizations use organizational structure to assess leadership behavior and job satisfaction of the employees. This has to be done transparently to enhance its credibility when coming up with conclusions from the findings. The leaders should maintain good relationships with the employees. This ensures that the working environment is favorable and conducive to work in. the attitudes and behavior of employees in health organizations with good interaction between them and their leaders is positive leading to good work ethic and service delivery (Malloch & porter-O’Grady, 2006).

The performance of any organization will determine the reputation that it builds for itself. People’s perception about hospitals determines where they seek treatment and the quality of service they expect to get from these hospitals. The leaders should regularly assess the public’s perception of their organization and take action to know the thing it will cost for them to fulfill the public’s expectations. Good leaders ensure their organizations have the capacity to handle program evaluation, performance measurement, and patient satisfaction studies. A good reputation leads to confidence from the public.

Health care organizations with a culture of free flowing information and openness have been observed to fare better in hard economic times. This is because transparency helps employees gain a better understand of the financial picture hence reducing complacency. This leads better and faster execution of tasks and duties in the hospital setting. To achieve transparency in health care organizations, senior leadership must be aligned. Alignment is of great important among the senior leaders, as they are responsible for implementing policies governing the organizations. Misconception of an idea may result in hazardous outcomes considering the fact that health care is a sensitive sector entrusted with human life.

Transparency in the healthcare organization is enhanced by treating the employees as adults. In a case whereby tough decisions have to be made, the medical staff in the organization should be informed. Hence, information is communicated without filtering; thus, promoting transparency. On the other hand, leaders in the organization should answer tough questions posed by the medical staff and give satisfactory feedback. (Walshe, Kieran. & Smith, 2006).

The leaders of the organization can make transparency in healthcare organizations possible despite the challenges. Hospital records are highly sensitive and confidentiality between the medical professionals and patients must be maintained. This poses a challenge on the part of the leaders, as information within the organization must be made available and accessible to promote transparency (Burke & Friedman, 2010).

Leaders in healthcare organizations attain power and authority based on organizational politics. Medical promotions are as a result of the positions in the hierarchy of the organizational politics. This hinders transparency, as medical promotions should be as a result of merit. Employees consider these leaders incompetent; hence, policies formulated are not successfully implemented in the organization (Harrington & Newman, 2011).

Patients rely on the services of health care organizations place their trust in these organizations. They will be keen to know the kind of leadership that runs the organizations hence leaders should ensure that they avoid real or perceived conflicts of interests that may arise from relationships between the staff, leadership, and patients. Hence, with good leadership in place, healthcare organizations will be run better. This results in reduced cases of medical errors resulting from effective communication within the organization. Transparency establishes a common in which all the parties involved benefit from the healthcare organization.

In conclusion, transparency, management and leadership must go hand in hand to promote the growth of healthcare organization. Healthcare organizations involve handling patients’ lives and thus the management and leadership should be worth the trust. The leaders should also beware that challenges will always be there and so be ready to handle them in a transparent way. This can only be attained through trust and transparency among the staff that should be well aware of the goals of the organization to achieve effective management and leadership.

 

 

 

 

 

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