Introduction
Comprehensive organization analysis is crucial in assessing the relationship between individuals and their behavior towards attaining goals. 21st-century organizations are characterized by interchanging components that interact at different levels of operations, resulting in complex processes. Therefore, managers and stakeholders must prioritize advanced analyses to stay informed of the elements that impact their initiatives and the appropriate business models to counter diversities. This essay details an advanced organization analysis of Advent Health Ocala using Collin’s model/framework and information obtained from interviewing a health information manager (HIM) at the institution.
Healthcare Organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems
Even though some healthcare institutions can operate alone, their actions have broad implications for other players and components within the healthcare system. A complex adaptive system refers to an entity with interconnected networks of independent components that interact continuously and is bounded by a common purpose, goal, or objectives (Porter-O’Grady, 2020). Healthcare organizations comprise functional departments that operate as sub-systems but contribute to the general outcomes of the institutional goals (Kuziemsky, 2016). Therefore, it is essential to constantly evaluate and analyze healthcare organizations’ nature and potential impacts and dynamic factors to propel positive interventions.
The Challenges of Transforming Complex Systems
The most notable challenges in transforming complex adaptive systems are paradox and unpredictability. Complex adaptive systems do not have fixed boundaries, meaning that system components can overlap and interchange with time. The adaptive and overlapping nature of components in complex systems can interfere with change implementation and lead to unexpected outcomes (Provost et al., 2015). Moreover, components in healthcare systems depend on a set of rules to drive their actions. However, these rules may not be practical for differentiated components, thus impeding initiatives to transform the system. Additionally, system components continuously evolve. Thus, some forms of evolution may facilitate resistance to change or redundancy (Porter-O’Grady, 2020). Therefore, it is important to evaluate the nature of components before initiating changes.
Advent Health Ocala Organization Analysis
Advent Health is a brainchild of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, established more than 150 years ago. The organization was founded in 1973, but its roots date back to 1866 when treatment solutions were as harmful as the diseases they attempted to cure. Advent Health’s founders are considered pioneers for the belief that prevention is better than treatment. They assist individuals in leading high-quality lifestyles by strengthening their minds, lifting their spirits, and healing their bodies (Advent Health, n.d.). Moreover, they have a mission of extending the healing ministry of Christ through their faith-based approaches that form the foundation of their operations.
Advent Health is an industry leader in providing quality and safe healthcare to meet high levels of patient satisfaction. They have the vision to provide innovative and viable care that adapts to patient needs, affordable and exceptional care at every step, and holistic care to make people feel brilliant (Advent Health, n.d.). Over the years, Advent Health has developed several innovative healthcare approaches to reach community members and offer personalized healthcare directly. They have a positive track record of providing tailored solutions and alleviating public health issues. Moreover, the health information manager confirmed that they have a dedicated feedback system and community assessment programs that assist in identifying and dealing with societal concerns.
Advent Health’s Organizational Culture
Advent health has a defined organizational culture that is emulated in all its institutions. According to Schein (2013), an organization’s culture is a pattern of shared ideology and assumptions learned over time due to its effectiveness in solving issues. These patterns are often due to internal integrations and external adaptations that have worked well in the past and are considered valuable (Schein, 2013). Therefore, they are passed on to new individuals as directions on thinking, behaving, and feeling when faced with problems. The three levels of organizational culture are artifacts/behaviors, espoused values, and the assumption level, consisting of invisible components.
Artifacts in an organization are the visible components that make up the institution. Advent Health has more than 80,000 professional healthcare providers, skilled nursing facilities, outpatient clinics, hospitals, and home health agencies. All these components are linked using effective communication channels and protocol to ensure correlation. However, the health information manager suggested that the organization has interoperability issues. Therefore, it should look into solutions to encourage connectivity. Espoused values of an organization’s culture describe institutional beliefs (Schein, 2013). Advent Health’s core values include quality service excellence, community well-being, high ethical standards, stewardship, and inclusiveness. Moreover, they have a common mission and vision to provide care that targets the body, mind, and spirit for the best outcomes.
The lowest level of an organization’s culture is assumptions involving invisible attributes. Advent Health has a history of spearheading preventive approaches rather than curative techniques (Advent Health, n.d.). Therefore, they have made it their mission to research and identify the most effective approaches to prevent disease to the mind, body, and soul. The main Advent Health rules are; all RNs should wear navy blue or mint green scrubs, all CNS wear burgundy scrubs, and Cardio should wear green scrubs. Additionally, employees are expected to maintain high professionalism, competency, and effort toward achieving goals (Advent Health, n.d.). However, the organization should develop more ways to include their staff in problem-solving and autonomous decision-making (Kaiser, 2017). Autonomy will go a long way in improving service delivery and efficiency.
Effective communication is critical to an organization’s development. Therefore, managers should learn the basics of humble inquiry to ensure collaboration and foster trustworthy relationships (Schein, 2013). Humble inquiry is a form of communication that utilizes a gentle technique of asking instead of telling/directing. During our interview, the HIM confirmed that managers at Advent Health have mutually respectful relationships with their staff. Their leaders employ an open approach to communication which is critical as it encourages collaboration and participation (Wojciechowski et al., 2016). In case of errors, team members develop solutions and inform their leaders of the necessary changes for discussion. This culture ensures that everyone willingly contributes to the initiatives.
Advent Health Leadership Style
Advent Health is headed by a president, Terry Shaw, who is also the CEO, and the organization has a board chair, Ron Smith. Advent Health exhibits a transactional leadership style as its structure highlights the essence of supervision, organization, and group performance (Wojciechowski et al., 2016). The CEO and the board chairman work together with the department managers to manage resources and oversee initiatives. The senior corporate managers in the finance, information, administrative, clinical, and marketing departments also work with teams within the department using standardized rules and procedures, clearly defined roles, and supervision.
Polarity Thinking Model
Polarities refer to opposing values or interdependent, differentiated, or alternative points of view. The polarity thinking model leverages contributions from all parties to formulate solutions. Instead of adopting an either-or approach, polarity thinking considers contributions from all sides to ensure all parties’ gain (Wesorick & Shaha, 2015). During our interview, the health information manager pointed out that the most common issues due to polarities experienced by Advent Health are meeting cultural and personal needs using evidence-based practices and maintaining organizational stability while embracing changes. Implementing new technologies to patient care service delivery is slightly off-balance due to resistance to change and slow adoption of the systems by practitioners and patients.
Advent Health’s Road Map to Becoming Great
There are several approaches that healthcare organizations can adopt to inhibit polarities, enhance their service delivery and achieve their goals. However, research by Collins (2016) details the most critical factors using a framework of three stages. Disciplined people, disciplined thoughts, and disciplined actions. The seven concepts that elevate companies to greater heights include; level five leadership, choosing the right people, confronting brutal facts, the hedgehog concept, a culture of discipline, technological accelerators, and the flywheel concept.
The interviewee confirmed that the staff at Advent Health work closely in teams that aim at achieving similar goals. The organization prides itself on having some of the best clinicians on the globe. Moreover, the organization’s leadership style and structure support positive development. Leaders at Advent Health are known to lead by example (Prince, 2021). Moreover, they lay their foundations on Christian values that foster humility and compassion towards others. Therefore, it is evident that the organization has the right people on the bus. Advent health is also a pioneer at dealing with the most alleviating issues facing public health. Currently, the organization is working on programs to encourage Corona Virus vaccinations and help manage neglected disease conditions.
Moreover, the organization has taken several steps to deal with technology issues, discrimination, stereotyping, and societal factors that impact service delivery. The organization has adopted approaches using the hedgehog concept by focusing on providing dedicated care to improve community welfare. Advent Health has built its brand by stressing the need for change toward quality and inclusion. Additionally, the organization is always turning its flying wheel to spearhead innovation and structural health programs. Advent Health works with social groups dealing with chronic illnesses, mental illness, stigma, and poverty to help them receive attention. The organization’s approaches ensure that they are always redefining healthcare service delivery.
Disruptive Innovation in Healthcare
Disruptive innovations refer to the advancements that have displaced the traditional approaches of running operations and problem-solving. Disruptive innovations in healthcare are generally associated with new technologies like wearables, information systems, self-monitoring programs, and automatic testing (Skiba, 2018). Advent Health has adopted innovations that enable it to offer tailored medical services. They have invested in telemedicine and automated systems that promote patient-to-physician interactions. Moreover, they carry out continuous training to equip physicians with the knowledge to work with systems and tackle issues. A disruptive innovation that I will consider as a future nurse is using chips embedded in individuals to store and improve data interoperability. Such a system would substantially improve treatment efficiency as practitioners will readily access data records.
Conclusion
Healthcare institutions such as Advent Health exist in a dynamic environment that exposes them to several challenges. However, a critical organization analysis can help identify the weak links, mitigate the impact of challenges, and initiate changes. An organization’s culture and leadership styles are critical to its success as they determine the effectiveness and efficiency of processes towards goals. It is advisable to formulate a working environment with positive attributes where individuals can openly share their ideas and implement change. However, it is also critical to develop approaches to dealing with change resistance, destructive innovations, and factors that can impede development. Advent Health has transformed in many ways since its establishment. However, it shares a common mission, vision, and values aimed at achieving greatness.
References
Advent Health (n.d.). Mission and History. Web.
Collins, J. (2016). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap and others don’t. Instead.
Kaiser, J. A. (2017). The relationship between leadership style and nurse‐to‐nurse incivility: Turning the lens inward. Journal of Nursing Management, 25(2), 110-118.
Kuziemsky, C. (2016). Decision-making in healthcare is a complex adaptive system. In Healthcare Management Forum (Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 4-7). SAGE Publications.
Porter-O’Grady, T. (2020). Complexity Leadership: Constructing 21st-Century Health Care. Nursing administration quarterly, 44(2), 92-100.
Prince, C. J. (2021). How AdventHealth Is Making The Most of a Healthcare Revolution. News. Web.
Provost, S. M., Lanham, H. J., Leykum, L. K., McDaniel Jr, R. R., & Pugh, J. (2015). Health care huddles: managing complexity to achieve high reliability. Health Care Management Review, 40(1), 2-12.
Schein, E. H. (2013). Humble Inquiry. Reflections, 13(2).
Skiba, D. J. (2018). Doctoral Education: Preparing Our Next Generation for Disruptive Innovation. Nursing education perspectives, 39(5), 329-330.
Wesorick, B., & Shaha, S. (2015). Guiding health care transformation: A next-generation, diagnostic remediation tool for leveraging polarities. Nursing Outlook, 63(6), 691-702.
Wojciechowski, E., Pearsall, T., Murphy, P., & French, E. (2016). A case review: Integrating Lewin’s theory with lean’s system approach for change. Online journal of issues in nursing, 21(2).