Running Header: MANAGING ORGANIZATION AND LEADING PEOPLE

Managing Organization and Leading People Task 1

Adrian Gaspar
Western Governs University

MANAGING ORGANIZATION AND LEADING PEOPLE

Managing Organizations and Leading People

Preferred Imaging (PI) is a health care organization that specializes in providing
diagnostic images of patients sent forth by referring physicians. Diagnostic images are scans,
utilizing different scanners through the use of technologists, ultimately discovering a suspected
pathology a patient may or may not have. PI is an outpatient facility, which means we only see
patients that are, to a certain extent, ambulatory. Although PI is an outpatient facility, there is still
an on-staff radiologist who reads and performs procedures on-site. Overall, PI is like the
radiology department of a hospital in a free standing facility.
The history behind PI started in 2003 when a radiographic technologist saw an
opportunity to buy an imaging facility that was about to file for bankruptcy. PI was then born as
a facility linked to St. John Hospital, operating as a sector of the hospital. Unfortunately, the
hospital later that year filed for bankruptcy and permanently closed doors, which forced PIs
doors to close. However, a few months later Preferred Imaging open doors to a free standing
facility that was privately owned and acquired its own patients. Through all the hardship PI
initially endured by competing with hospitals, PI set an objective to always be a free standing
facility that can offer diagnostic imaging to all patients that are in need. Being a free standing
facility, PI is able to keep costs down and consequently reduce patients out of pocket costs.
To further evaluate what the purpose behind PI is and how we receive our patients, an
overview of the operations of health care needs to first be discussed. It is common practice for an
individual to see a physician when encountering physical or pathological complications that may
be effecting their ability to live or live with ease. For example, an individual that fell while
playing sports and possibly fractured his or her ankle will see a physician just as an individual
who has a cold or upper respiratory infection. The concept behind seeing a physician is that they

MANAGING ORGANIZATION AND LEADING PEOPLE

have high levels of education in their specialty and have the experience to be able to determine
what the cause of the complaint is, hence diagnosis, and then after provide a prognosis to resolve
the problem. However, today, imaging can confirm a physicians diagnosis and therefore
eliminate any trial and error. This will result in immediate results toward the patients healing
and reduce the chance of complications due to the length of time one may have to wait for
results. Different imaging modalities provide different types of diagnostic scans depending on
the patients diagnosis. These scans are ordered or prescribed by the physician treating the patient
and PI is the facility that would be able to provide the service needed.
Preferred Imaging is a corporation of many imaging facilities extended throughout the
Dallas/Fort-Worth (DFW) metroplex area. Facilities are individually managed with a clinical
administrator (CA), leading the front desk and clerical work of the facility, and one or more chief
technologists leading the group of technologists over the clinical aspect of the facility. The
clinical administrator at the facility I am chief technologist at will be referred to by the name of
Ashley. Ashley is a leader who is still trying to develop her style of leadership. She is a new
leader who was promoted from an entry level position and has never been a leader before.
Ashley is trying to lead through a professional demeanor. Her intents are for the facilitys
growth and best practice. She attempts to not get emotionally involved in her choices and tries to
make decisions that will benefit the organization and ultimately the referring physicians so that
they can refer more patients to our facility. It has happened many times when a physician has
called complaining that they did not get a CD delivered to their facility with the patients
diagnostic images. Although our facility has shipped out the CD and it may have been lost,
Ashley will make the decision to take blame, and redeliver the CD through the companys
courier for guaranteed arrival. The referring physicians can be very verbally inappropriate but

MANAGING ORGANIZATION AND LEADING PEOPLE

Ashley knows not to get emotionally involved and simply do whatever makes the physician
content. Through this she expresses leadership, which is an example for the organization and
ultimately promotes our individual facility.
Since PI is a health care facility, Ashley tries to operate by conducting best practices for
patients. Ethical values are to be practiced in all health care facilities because a patients
wellbeing is of utmost importance. Ashley applies best ethical practices when a patient needs an
urgent scan as it may be an emergency. The schedule may be completely full, but Ashley will
schedule the urgent patient immediately and attempt to move another patient, who may be a
follow up, to a later time. Although Ashley is not familiar nor in charge of leading the clinical
aspect of the facility, we as technologists also enforce ethical practices by adequately
determining what scan a patient needs and whether or not they need contrast agents for their
given anticipated diagnosis.
The last type of leadership practice that Ashley exercises is communication. Ashley used
to be a front desk clerk, later promoted to front desk supervisor, and recently promoted to clinical
administrator. However, her former co-workers are still front desk clerks and the staff have a
personal relationship with Ashley. Although this can be a very difficult situation as favoritism
can and may be shown, the facility does run professionally. Ultimately, Ashley cannot express
total strict style leadership as there is too much personal involvement with the current staff.
Therefore, suitable communication and directive is needed to pave the path for proper operations
of the facility. Ashley is great at being involved in all aspect of the clerical administration to
assure that everything is done according to policies and procedures. This ultimately provides the
clinic with a smooth and productive operation.

MANAGING ORGANIZATION AND LEADING PEOPLE

Ashleys leadership style is more inclined toward equality, which makes the work
environment friendly and stress free. Directive type leadership can cause favoritism and then
cause animosity between employees. However, in health care we are all there for the patients and
their care and compassion is more needed rather than strict business-like leadership. Therefore,
this type of quality type leadership has enabled us all to feel as part of one big team where
everyones part is important and needed. This offers employees a feeling of being needed and
wanted for the growth of the facility. When employees are listened to and changes after made to
benefit not only the facility but the employees as well leads to better and more productive
employees. Productivity is very important in any business for facilitating growth.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
As any organization, PI has strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Although
PI is a corporation with many facilities, the focus of this SWOT analysis will focus only on the
particular facility I am employed at. The strengths that make PI a leader in diagnostic imaging is
the ability to tailor to the needs of the referring physicians. For example, if a group of referring
physicians were in need of CTA scan, computed tomography of angiography, as they have had
many patients with complications to which a CTA would be able to confirm. Upper management
decided that an updated CT scanner would be needed to provide the referring physicians the
scans they are looking for and moreover, send us additional patients.
Another strength is PIs ability to maintain content employees through consistent gifts
and incentives. Happy employees make for productive and charismatic staff. PI is an extremely
busy facility as there are six different imaging modalities and therefore, a high traffic facility.
High traffic in health care usually translates to stressful environment. Technologists are hire-at-

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will hourly employees that can go anywhere and scan as that is their profession and their license
enables them to do that. Consequently, the turnover for technologists at any facility is high
because a technologist will work wherever the compensation is better and they are appreciated
for their service. PI does a great job keeping technologists long term as they consistently receive
bonuses and incentives for appreciation toward their much needed service.
Weaknesses
When a company like PI expands to a corporate level, there needs to be standardization
so that all facilities operate under the same conditions. For example, a Walmart in Dallas, TX
will, for the most part, be identical to the one in Chicago, IL, even the layout of the retail store
will be the same. PI does not have standardization and makes it difficult for technologists that are
floating or rotating through different facilities. It is difficult because PI has a group of
radiologists that read and report all the diagnostic images scanned by all facilities. Since the
same radiologists are reading, it is only logical that all imaging modalities have the same
protocols as other facilities on similar scanners. However, that is not the case, most facilities
have different protocols, which in turn may enable one facility to provide better scans than others
simply because protocols are different. It is therefore important that protocols be standardized.
Organizations, like PI, have a tendency to forget that the employees of the organizations
are important as they keep an organization operating. Floating through numerous PI facilities, I
have learned that managers of each facility treat their employees differently. Technologists are
the heart of the facility as without them the facility would not get any reimbursements from the
insurance companies since patients could not be scanned. Consequently, clinical administrators
will express thanks through incentivizing technologists with bonuses, gift cards, lunches, etc. to
show appreciation when meeting quotas or working late. However, some facilities have

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managers that do not understand the importance of happy technologists and therefore have a high
turnover rate. It is important for the facility as a whole to follow the same procedures as to when
and how often technologists should get incentives. This will provide more happy employees and
reduce the turnover rate.
Opportunities
PI has many opportunities looking forward that will expand and grow the organization
drastically. PI recently connected with Baylor Medical and will begin seeing patients from the
hospital. Baylor medical is a large medical center that sees more patients than it can handle from
an imaging perspective and PI has built a facility to help with the patient traffic from Baylor
Medical Center. This will evidently result in more patients that PI will be able to see and be
reimbursed for. Moreover, since this particular facility is linked to Baylor, PI is able to request
and receive hospital-based reimbursements. These charges are much higher and therefore more
profitable.
Furthermore, PI is working on building their own patient clientele and therefore
eliminating the need for referring physicians to send patients. PI has started a pain clinic facility,
which offers spinal pain injections for patients with back problems. These patients need to have a
MRI scan before receiving the steroid/pain injection. This once again provides PI with more
scans without the need for referring physicians. There is also a sports orthopedic center in
process of being built with a network of doctors that will be able to see patients there and refer
all patients to PI for imaging. This again increases the patient traffic without the need to beg
referring physicians to send patients.

MANAGING ORGANIZATION AND LEADING PEOPLE

Threats
PI does not offer anything that is exclusive and therefore is always under threat of losing
patients to other imaging facilities. MRI scans are high reimbursements and although the initial
capital needed to open a facility is high, the compensation outweighs it and therefore imaging
facilities are opening throughout the city of Dallas. The more imaging facilities the greater the
competition. Whenever the competition is high the cost of service is reduced to win the client. In
this case, the patients out of pocket costs are reduced so that PI can convince the patient to get
their scans done at PI. With reduced costs it is evident that PIs profits are reduced.
Obamacare has passed and recently implemented which has hurt the reimbursement rates
PI sees. One particular imaging facility of PI used to do 550 MRI scans a month, however, once
the reimbursements have been drastically reduced, the facility is required to perform 640 MRI
scans to be able to earn the same revenue it did before. This means that technologists are over
worked and may not have time for lunch. It means that the patient contact time is reduced and
patients feel rushed. This has become a great threat to PI because to continue being as profitable
as before, health care ethics and integrities are tested because of Obamacare and the lowered
reimbursements.
Leadership Evaluation
Strengths of Leadership Practices
The leadership theory that best encompasses the clinical administrator, Ashley, is servant
leadership. This is because a servant leader transcends self-interest to serve others, the
organization, and society (e.g. DAFT, R. L., 2014). This defines the leadership practices that
Ashley performs because of her approach toward equality in the workplace. This is a strength for
the organization as every employees voice is heard and changes are done as a group to better the

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facilitys way of operating. As any organization, PI has different employment levels based on the
job title and job duties. The levels range from front desk representative to clinical administrator
to technologist to radiologist. However, we are all a team and therefore operate under the concept
that neither ones position is more important than the others. Ashley has this commitment to
serving the needs of others, and also of the organization and its mission as a whole
(SCHWANTES, M., 2015). For example, whenever there are problems with the way issues are
handled within the facility, Ashley will ask the technologists what can be done to improve but
also asks front desk representatives what they think. We then all collaborate and come to an
agreement to better the facility and how things operate. Ashleys servant leadership approach
enables the staff to help in resolving the issues at hand from different tactics rather than a biased
one.
Servant leadership further looks at the wellbeing of the organization as a whole. Through
such leadership, it is thought that when leaders place a priority on providing tangible and
emotional support to followers and assisting followers in reaching their full potential, followers
in turn see the leader as a role model (LIDEN, R. C., WAYNE, S. J., CHENWEI, L., &
MEUSER, J. D., 2014). For example, our facility is currently undergoing remodeling to make the
facility more modern and pleasant to the patients experience. This requires that painters and
contractors perform the renovations at night when there are not as many patients. The
technologist that works at night is occupied with diagnostic scans and not familiar with the
administrative decisions of what is being remodeled. Ashley works regular business hours,
however, she is also at the facility at night to make sure all renovations are going as planned.
This evidently requires that Ashley takes time away from her personal time to make sure that the
facility is completed on time and accurately. PI is open seven days a week and sees many

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patients on a daily basis, therefore, conducting renovations in a timely manner enables us to

return to normal operations quickly. Ashley makes sure this happens and therefore puts the
facility before herself.
Another strength Ashley brings the organization is her care for patients and the
community as well. It is a common occurrence for patients to call and request immediate scans
because of severe pains, and Ashley will find a way to get the patients scheduled as soon as
possible. Through such practices, our facility is marketed as one that cares for their patients.
These practices of servant leadership, showing empathy and behaving ethically are aspects of
servant leadership behavior that increase the attractiveness of servant leaders in the eyes of their
followers (LIDEN, R. C., WAYNE, S. J., CHENWEI, L., & MEUSER, J. D., 2014). Moreover,
we are involved in community fundraisers, marathons, and gift donations for the poor. PI is a
caring health care facility and Ashley exemplifies this through the before mentioned actions.
Weaknesses of Leadership Practices
Although Ashley has great strengths but as any human being there are weaknesses and/or
aspects of her leadership that can be perfected. There are many things that require her attention
and most of the time it is communicating with referring physicians. The diagnostic imaging
industry is one where alternating technologists may rotate through different facilities. There are
times where a regular technologist takes time off and a temporary technologist fills in. This
upsets referring physicians because some may be used to a particular imaging style that the
regular technologist uses and will call Ashley to complain about the images. Ashley becomes
very anxious when referring physician call to complain and relays that stressful demeanor on
technologists through accusations. It is important to see the bigger picture, this requires the
ability to look at a problem by thinking beyond the day-to-day realities (SCHWANTES, M.,

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2015). This can be due to Ashleys inexperience as a clinical administrator and does not know
how to handle the issue.
Administrative work and clinical work are two separate sections in our facility as they
entail different aspects of the health care provided. Ashley is considered the facility manager, she
does not have any clinical knowledge or experience as to the medical needs and operations of
diagnostic imaging. Referring physicians are definitely doctors but may not be certain that what
they are ordering is the needed scan to best visualize the suspected diagnosis. It is our job, as
technologists, to decipher through the orders and call the physicians office and request a
corrected order. This can cause complications as some referring physicians will call back and
complain to Ashley as to why we did not scan what was requested. Ashley will then question the
technologist, stating that we should follow what the order stated. However, technologists are
trained to follow a practice known as ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable), which means
we will not scan or radiate a patient just because a physician thinks it is needed even though it is
not needed. Ashley does not understand that concept and believes that the physician is always
right, however, technologists will not put their license on the line because a physician requested a
scan that is not needed. However, Ashley should recall that referring physicians commonly order
the wrong scans on patient and technologists request corrected orders. This requires Ashley to
have foresight from prior experiences, which is the ability to foresee the likely outcome of a
situation. It means understanding the lessons from the past, the realities of the present, and the
like likely consequence of a decision for the future (SCHWANTES, M., 2015). This is a
weakness for Ashley because she does not have the clinical knowledge or experience, which
leads her to always question the work, or lack of, performed by technologists.

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Lastly, a clinical administrator is required to make sure the facility is fully stocked with
the needed things so that it can operate effectively. One of those things is bottled water in the
patient fridge as patients are required to drink for many exams such as: ultrasound, post-contrast
MRI, and post-contrast CT. It has happened that the fridge did not have water bottles and patient
needed to reschedule because we were not able to conduct the needed scans. This causes the
facility to lose patients and ultimately may upset the referring physicians because the scans may
be needed ungently. Each employee has their own tasks as entailed in their job description and
through trust the facility is able to work efficiently operate as each employee ensures their duties
are met. It is Ashleys job to keep things stocked and maintain trust between employees. Servant
leadership relates to outcomes has revealed that procedural justice climate, team potency, and
trust mediate relationships between team/unit-level servant leadership and team/unit performance
and/or team/unit organizational citizenship behavior (LIDEN, R. C., WAYNE, S. J.,
CHENWEI, L., & MEUSER, J. D., 2014).
Future Success of Leadership Practices
Health care is a very stressful industry as it entails patients health and the care to aide to
their medical complications. This requires complete attention to detail and adhering to the
particular needs of each patient individually. Ashley, through her servant leadership style enables
a well operating facility as she is constantly focusing on helping others. This approach towards
the operation of the facility provides an environment where all employees can focus on the
wellbeing of the patients. Servant leaders serve by giving things away such as power, ideas,
information, recognition, credit for accomplishments, even money (DAFT, R. L., 2014).
Although this is honorable, more should be done when concerning patients and their wellbeing.
Ashley may try to focus on helping others, but it is important to remember that means helping

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others even if it causes problems to the operation of the facility. For example, it is common for a
patient to need extra attention, physical help, and more images to properly diagnosis their
medical pathology. This will result in more time, which puts the facility behind and causes a
domino effect for the rest of the day. Ashley needs to remain calm and remember that we are a
health care based medical facility caring for patients and not a business trying to accrue high
profits. It is most important that Ashley does not compromise ethical principles in order to
achieve success (LIDEN, R. C., WAYNE, S. J., CHENWEI, L., & MEUSER, J. D., 2014).
Therefore, Ashley should not ask technologists to rush just to keep the clinic on time as
technologists spend as much time as the patient needs. It is hard to schedule and allow enough
time for each patient as some patients may need more time than others.
Furthermore, Ashley tries to motive the staff by constantly reflecting light on each
employee individually and congratulating them on doing great work. This takes away any selfish
acts and makes employees feel important and appreciated. According to LIDEN, R. C., WAYNE,
S. J., CHENWEI, L., & MEUSER, J. D. (2014), servant leadership is based on the premise that
leaders who are best able to motivate followers are those who focus least on satisfying their own
personal needs and most on prioritizing the fulfillment of followers needs. Happy employees
result in confident employees to provide the best patient care possible. To achieve this, it is
important for Ashley to remember that she is a role model for the staff and her actions are
noticed. Ashley frequently takes two hour lunches when the staff is only allowed 30 minutes.
These things are noticed and as mentioned by LIDEN, R. C., WAYNE, S. J., CHENWEI, L., &
MEUSER, J. D., (2014), leaders are seen as role models and employees engage in similar
behaviors. It is therefore important that Ashley always follows policies and procedures.

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Lastly, Ashley is a great listener and through the servant leadership practices, she offers
her staff the ability to communicate with her regarding problems. When issues are hidden from
managers, the problem is never resolved and in many cases can cause a domino effect, causing
more problems down the line. SCHWANTES, M. (2015) states that listening is the most
important because it is a crucial yet frequently absent trait in leaders who are self-orientated
rather than devoted to service. As any leader, there are things that Ashley can improve on,
however, following the style of a servant leadership offers an open mindedness toward the future
development of her career as clinical administrator and provides employees the feeling that they
are listened to and appreciated. As listening is a great trait to have as a leader, the next step after
listening should be practiced as well: empathy. Employees may see and feel that they are being
listened to but do not see any care or changes to their complaints. Ashley has the tendency to
dismiss all the complaints or changes that need to be implemented. As SCHWANTES, M. (2015)
stated, empathizing with others and putting themselves in the other persons shoes, this means
listening without judging. This is a future goal for Ashleys servant leadership development so
that employees can feel listened to and understood through Ashleys actions of change for the
better of the organization.

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References

DAFT, R. L. (2014). Management (11th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western.

LIDEN, R. C., WAYNE, S. J., CHENWEI, L., & MEUSER, J. D. (2014). SERVANT
LEADERSHIP AND SERVING CULTURE: INFLUENCE ON INDIVIDUAL AND
UNIT PERFORMANCE. Academy Of Management Journal, 57(5), 1434-1452.
SCHWANTES, M. (2015). Servant Leadership. Leadership Excellence Essentials, 32(5), 30-31.