Reference no: EM132241168
Kristen Miller was excited when she was offered the deputy chief operating officer position in a medium sized hospital in Clearwater, Florida. The newly created position will manage the hospital’s human resources division and risk management division. Kristen has five years of experience in healthcare management in the Midwest and a newly earned master’s degree in healthcare management. The hospital serves a mostly retired demographic that puts high demands on their hospital’s capability, staff, and facilities. One of her first acts in the new job was to meet with her two division chiefs, and it became evident that there were going to be challenges to address immediately. In human resources, her section chief complained of higher than average injury and sickness call out rates for professional licensed employees and staff employees. When asked what programs were in place to promote health and safety, her section chief answered, “Our workforce tends to be older than the national average and I guess the higher call-out-rates just reflect the demographic that we have to work with.” Kristen learned that the hospital had a minimum number of specific health and safety workplace programs for its employees ad was due for an OSHA site visit to look at it is overall environmental workplace practices. From speaking with her risk management chief, Kristen learned that the hospital had an excellent record of maintaining service during potential hazardous events. Upon further questioning, however, the section chief admitted that this was mostly because the facility had the good fortune of never being directly affected by an even and only have had activate their all hazards plan for a couple of close calls. Overall, the management and staff felt like planning meetings, trainings, and exercises were not needed because they had never actually had to implements the emergency plan; they felt like the hospital was built to withstand almost anything. Accordingly, the section chief had written and updated all the facility plans himself without any input from other hospital departments. After reviewing the situation, Kristen decided that her first major project would be to work with the section chiefs in building their risk management and preparedness programs. She understands that this will require that the CEO support initial increase in program expenditures. However, she feels that this investment will lead to fewer employees days lost, a more disaster resilient facility, and a healthier, more positive employee workforce. Achieving these outcomes will eventually show returns above and beyond the initial investment. Lastly, in briefing the CEO, Kristen sensed that the CEO was content with how the human resources and risk management section were operating and that there had been no real evaluation of how the system was trending in absenteeism, safety, or preparedness. Her orders from her boss w ere short and to the point: “Just don’t let it get any worse and have an adverse effect on facility operations.”
1. Work with the chiefs without the support of the CEO, to make improvements, and then after progress report successes.
2. Begin with building an evaluation system, tracking health and safety metrics of the employees, then use that data to convince the CEO?
3. Start Looking for a new Job?
4. Addressing the lack of Emergency preparedness? 5. Other What would YOU DO?
a. Write at least 50 words min. answering the question, where you would start and why?.