Case Study 1: Argosy Medical Center

Question.1) What interventions would you recommend? Come up with two options.

From the case study, it is evident that the staff is over-worked and burnt out. It takes us to

two possible reasons/causes. Firstly, it can be assumed that in the earlier years, there were not

many patients and staff was adequate to care for the number of patients that visited the Argosy

Medical Center. As the reputation and rating of hospital increased, more patients began to visit,

while the staff number remained the same. The only possible outcome in this scenario would be

that staff was overworked and lost their will and enthusiasm to tend to their patients with the

same zeal and zest. Second cause could be the expectation of the staff. As the staff worked hard

enough to make Argosy Medical Center the best hospital, they might want something in return

for their exceptional work (incentives) as promotion, raise etc. which, the hospital failed to

provide causing loss in overall working efficiency of the staff.

To solve the problem, first intervention would be a general meeting with the staff or

conduct a survey of staff, asking relevant questions and suggestions to keep the staff efficiency

to the maximum. As evident from the case study, there was nothing done to ask employees about

the problems they faced in Argosy besides the annual refresher course, which apparently didn’t

work out as expected. After the meeting/conducting survey, management could get on-hand

knowledge about where the hospital went wrong, what employees expect from hospital and how

the hospital working environment could be improved so, productivity and efficiency could be

increased. If they are low-staffed, more staff could be hired. If there are no incentives, hospital

could produce incentives and meet the demands of its employees to increase working efficiency

and much more.

 The second intervention would be to ask the patients, incoming or previous, to ask

questions like what they expect from a medical facility, what things you don’t like, how would

you like to improve our services etc. This kind of knowledge would be helpful in judging the

problems the hospital is facing or its short-comings. The hospital can take help from such

surveys to implement changes, improving services and providing more helpful and careful

customer support than ever before.

Question.2) Defend your preferred option to the CEO and include a timeline for your plan.

As the case study emphasizes on staff more and have already knows, where the problem

lies, I would prefer the first intervention discussed above. The reasons for choosing the first

option are it is less time consuming, a cost and time-effective methods, whereas, yielding higher

results. First, a suitable time would be chosen by taking a look in the schedule of hospital, which

expects the least number of patients, to conduct a staff meeting. The timing of the meeting would

be at least 2-3 hours, which is sufficient for hearing everyone’s complaints and suggestion.

Secondly, the hospital would provide incentives to staff members. If the staff complain about

their number, more staff would be hired as per recommendations and requirements. Providing an

ear to the staff makes them feel important and in return, hospital can expect greater loyalty and

enthusiasm from its staff and providing the incentives will make staff more hard-working to earn

those incentives by providing greater care to the patients. These meetings will be conducted at

least 2-3-times in a span of a month to get in-depth knowledge to improve and identify the areas

needing more attention. After getting such knowledge, the hospital would improve its weak

areas, providing incentives and fulfilling demands of their employees in 4 months’ tops. Hence, a

5-month plan and implementation program would be considered best for such problems faced by

the employees of Argosy Medical Center.

Analyze: The hospital previous years of success and recent year would be compared in terms of

revenue, patients’ satisfaction and quality of care. In this way, management can clearly see a

performance gap.

Design: A staff meeting would be conducted at least 2-3 times in a span of one month.

Management will listen to the complaints and suggestions of staff. After gaining in-depth of the

problems, the management would try to meet staff’s demand in the next 2 months. After

fulfilling, there would be monthly evaluations on patients’ satisfaction and would devise a

feedback cards, which would be given to patients on their discharge. This way, the management

can evaluate improvement in patient care and staff enthusiasm.

Develop: A staff leader would be chosen by voting within staff. That staff leader would come up

by number of suggestions and demands of the employees to the management. The management

would discuss the improvements and incentives for the employees with the executive body and

then decide on the reasonable demands to be met.

Implement: In the next 2-months, the staff’s reasonable requirements would be met, more

incentives would be given and more enthusiasm would be expected of the employees. In this

period, the sole focus of the hospital would be on their patients’ satisfaction level and getting

their feedback. In the next two months, the results be compared and if there is still something

missing, there will be more staff meetings and management will discuss issues. The whole point

is to maintain a management-staff communication.

Evaluate: After months, a thorough evaluation would be conducted in which, the hospital would

emphasize mainly on patients’ feedback and overall reputation of the hospital. In this evaluation,

staff members would be answerable if the things were business as usual or congratulated if
things improved. If things remain the same after fulfilling staff demands, then, the hospital

would require changes in the environment of hospital as in renovations, design, chilling or

heating systems etc.

Succession Planning: Staff leader as chosen before would lead the role after this plan and will

report staff problems to the management body. This will help maintain an effective

communication between staff and management to run things smoothly.