Hospital Merger

Hospital Merger

            Hope Medical Centre, which was a private entity, served the residents as a non-profit organization for more than 80 years. The hospital was considered exceptional because of its ability to serve people well and the family-like atmosphere that was present in the hospital. Hope had a culture where all the doctors, nurses and staff members knew each other by the first name. The staff members would interact with each other openly, especially at the cafeteria. The hospital mainly depended on the fundraising campaign as its primary source of capital to run its day to day operations.

Hope Medical Centre had an initiative known as the Beacon of Hope, whose mission was to inspire the members of the Hope community to achieve what was termed as exceptional caregivers. The American Medical Association named Hope as the nation’s most compassionate hospital, and this is what leads to the emergence of Beacon. All physicians, nurses, staff members and volunteers were required to utilize Beacon as their code of conduct.

The beacon mission statement was prevalent on all the hospitals’ promotional materials and a framed copy on patient’s rooms. The physicians used Beacon in their patient office spaces and the logo was also found in all the hospital lab coats and scrubs. The hospital gift shop had the Beacons logo in most of its items. A department managed the hope website, and all the necessary changes were made as a team.

The Great Valley Hospital Alliance is a profit-motivated organization as compared to Hope Medical Center, which was a non- profit organization. GVHA had an extensive financial base as compared to Hope, which enabled it to open more branches in different parts of the country. The atmosphere at the GVHA was that of business, more doctors were employed to be able to attend to the growing number of patients, and this made it difficult for the staff members to know one another by name. GVHA has a bright red and purple banner that depicts the logo. All the employees were required to put on the GVHA approved uniforms or lab coats.

Deal and Kennedy suggest the most vital influence on a company’s culture is the business environment where it operates. Corporate culture indeed goes a long way in determining the success of a given business enterprise. Deal and Kennedy model is based on two extents; one is the degree of risk associated with the activities of the company and two, the rate at which the companies get feedback from their employees on whether the business strategies were successful or not (Sun, 2008).

Hope Medical Centre has historically used the bet-your-company culture, which entails big-stake decisions, which take such a long time to get feedback as to whether the decision made paid off or not. This type of culture is mostly found in entities that engage in high capital intensive projects that take a relatively long time to establish the effectiveness of the decisions regarding the projects. The projects are usually high-risk, and it requires the organization to make a calculated move to achieve its set objectives. Meetings are typically held regularly for experts to chip in and give their much-needed opinions (Sun, 2008).

Hope Medical Center, for instance, decided to operate as a non-profit organization (community hospital), this was such a huge risk. Hospital management requires such a comprehensive financial base to be able to work effectively. This decision, however, paid off as Hope hospital was considered unique by many people. Depending on people’s contribution is yet another enormous risk that Hope had to take. Fundraising can prove to be less effective, especially when people don’t comply with contributing to hospital survival. Fundraising can also give an inconsistent amount of money that might make it challenging to finance most of the hospital operations. It may also be difficult to acquire some of the hospital equipment, which is usually expensive to purchase and maintain.

Edgar Schein’s model of organization culture postulates organizations do not embrace a culture just in a day but instead formed over a while as employees go through transitions and adapt to their external environment. The employees learn from past experiences and start practicing what is considered right, which finally forms part of their workplace culture.

Base on Schein’s theory, it would be complicated for the cultures of Hope and GVHA to coexist. Hope is founded on principles that are entirely different from what GVHA was formed. On the one hand, Hope was created fundamentally to serve the local people to promote health among the community members. On the other hand, GVHA was established as a commercial entity, which was mainly motivated by profit. Trying to merge these two organizations is like trying to form a miscible mixture from water and paraffin. If such were to happen, the two organizations would be in perpetual conflicts (Schein, 1993).

It is evident with the way Hope employees feel about GVHA; the hospital is exploiting the employees and slowly killing Hope culture. The employees feel that they are overworked, something they never experienced before the two hospitals merged. The Beacon logo, which was essential to Hope Hospital, is no longer prominent; instead, GVHA’s logo has replaced it. The friendly atmosphere that was initially present at Hope is no longer in existence. The quality of health care is slowly diminishing, more complaints from the doctors, nurses and even patients. All this points to the fact the two cultures were impossible to synchronize.

Hope Medical Center used to control by mutual adjustment, which is characterized by providing feedback controlled by professional discretion. The feedback is usually given to an assigned physician about a particular patient at the time of treatment. The feedback is, therefore, relevant to a specific situation. In Hope both the top officials and the employees accommodate, adapt and struggle with each other in forming working practices and employment relationships (Hall et al., 2005).

GVHA uses regulatory control, which involves the imposition of rules, regulations and sanctions to define acceptable medical practice and limit the discretion of individual practitioners. This method can bring about hostility among the employees who feel that their rights are being infringed. This is evident from the numerous complaints from the doctors and nurses when GVHA merged with Hope Medical Center (Gillilang & Manning, 2002).

Mutual adjustment appears to be an effective control mechanism in hospitals because when organizations are simple, the employees can coordinate directly among themselves with minimum supervision. For example, when nurses in hospitals coordinate directly, the production is bound to get better. Mutual adjustment, therefore, prevents the emergence of conflicting orientations that can result in communication and decision-making problems in an organization. An organization that focuses on building its structure integrating mechanism that incorporates mutual adjustment finds it easy for the top figures in authority and the employees to coordinate their functions (Hall et al., 2005).

The merging of Hope and GVHA would have worked if the two hospitals meet regularly to exchange ideas, overtime the working relationship would develop, leading to enhanced coordination and integration throughout the two mergers. When two entities that have merged participate equally in the decision-making process, organizations often establish task forces that promote communication and cooperation.

References

Sun, S. (2008). Organizational culture and its themes. International Journal of Business and             Management, 3(12), 137-141.

Schein, E. H. (1993). On dialogue, culture, and organizational learning. Organizational     Dynamics, 22(2), 40-51.

Hall, W. A., Long, B., Bermbach, N., Jordan, S., & Patterson, K. (2005). Qualitative teamwork issues and strategies: Coordination through mutual adjustment. Qualitative Health           Research, 15(3), 394-410.

Gilliland, D. I., & Manning, K. C. (2002). When do firms conform to regulatory control? The effect of control processes on compliance and opportunism. Journal of Public Policy &         Marketing, 21(2), 319-331.

(Gillilang & Manning, 2002)