I agree with you, operating in a highly regulated industry, the healthcare organizations need to consider several factors when it comes to forming an alliance or entering into a merger deal with other healthcare provider. As you mentioned, healthcare practice (patient care) is the one of the most important factor to consider because the ultimate goal of any healthcare organization is the quality patient care, so when organizations decide to merge the must consider how their new operation will contribute to patient care. You have provided very good reasons for the necessity of healthcare mergers. Merger can help organization cut the costs and share technology which can lead to improved patient
To guarantee that its members receive appropriate, high level quality care in a cost-effective manner, each managed care organization (MCO) tailors its networks according to the characteristics of the providers, consumers, and competitors in a specific market. Other considerations for creating the network are the managed care organization's own goals for quality, accessibility, cost savings, and member satisfaction. Strategic planning for networks is a continuing process. In addition to an initial evaluation of its markets and goals, the managed care organization must periodically reevaluate its target markets and objectives. After reviewing the markets, then the organization must modify its network strategies accordingly to remain competitive in the rapidly changing healthcare industry. Coventry Health Care, Inc and its affiliated companies recognize the importance of developing and managing an adequate network of qualified providers to serve the need of customers and enrolled members (Coventry Health Care Intranet, Creasy and Spath, http://cvtynet/ ). "A central goal of managed care is containing the costs of delivering care, but the wide variety of organizations typically lumped together under the umbrella of managed care pursue this goal using combination of numerous strategies that vary from market to market and from organization to organization" (Baker , 2000, p.2).
The board of trustees or directors, the community (if they have a say on the matter), and the employee union might influence the decision. If the financial difficulty is really severe, HSO might consider merging with another hospital in the area, if the other hospital is also struggling financially with their pediatrics unit or if the other hospital is ‘larger’. In both cases, the result will be more efficiency. This will be advantageous to my hospital and my hospital’s patients, for the bigger hospital might be better-equipped technologically. The merge itself does not need to be absolute; it does not require a complete consolidation of the other units/services. For example, it might be planned that the pediatrics services will be provided
Integrated Managed Care Organization- The organization is properly aligned for the primary driver being cost cutting services. Since all entities within the organization are responsible and affected by any expenses endured on any entity being unfavorable or favorable, the foundation serves as a primary motivator to reduce costs at all levels. This alignment eliminates any financial gains from driving high utilization of services or higher intensity services within the organization. Ultimately, this system allows the physician medical group to drive patient care, being responsible for the clinical care decisions as opposed to health plan making those decisions as designed in other organizations. This is the preferable model for Medicaid
The Physician/Hospital alignment model is the teamwork between physicians and hospitals to achieve the common goal of providing quality care to patients (med synergies). Physician/hospital alignment opportunities have come into play more predominantly in recent years due to quality, financial, and regulatory aspects of healthcare reform. Physicians and hospitals are more motivated to align now because the new healthcare reform requires an improvement on key aspects such as quality, cost, and efficiency. Moreover, an increase in patient numbers, a decrease in reimbursements, and a shift among new physician goals and values have contributed to the drive for this alignment. Physician/hospital alignment can be characterized in the range of tactical to transformational. Tactical alignments can include joint ventures, co-management agreements, volunteer medical staff, etc.
If Canada wishes to improve upon the quality of health care and tackle down generic issues in health care, one should consider integrating services. Integrated health services are considered part of the solution for the recurrent problem, one example being the continuous problem of chronic disease in Canada’s health care system. Integrated services come in many formats; horizontal, vertical, clinical, and physician.
For patients, when ACOs are fully functional they represent an increase in patient experience in several ways. First ACOs allow open communication between physicians from different specialties coordinating together to determine solutions. Second, ACOs also establish a single point of contact for all questions concerning care. Finally, these organizations represent a centralized network of physicians for the patient, creating a team to deliver comprehensive care. In fact, there is mounting evidence that suggests the potential benefits of care coordination in ACOs for both patient experience and quality, including reduced hospital admissions, improved quality of chronic disease management, improved patient satisfaction, and better access to specialty care (Stille, 2005). For providers, ACOs provide an opportunity for better collaboration on the various modalities they use on their patients, as well as improved workflow and communication. There are several stakeholders in which the large scale implementation of ACOs would affect. Federal and state government health insurance programs like Medicaid and Medicare, one type of stakeholders. With the implementation of ACOs and the shared savings model, Medicaid and Medicare now have a financial incentive to partner with healthcare organizations to deliver better outcomes at lower costs. If done correctly, Medicaid and Medicare stand to save large
When one examines managed health care and the hospitals that provide the care, a degree of variation is found in the treatment and care of their patients. This variation can be between hospitals or even between physicians within a health care network. For managed care companies the variation may be beneficial. This may provide them with opportunities to save money when it comes to paying for their policy holder’s care, however this large variation may also be detrimental to the insurance company. This would fall into the category of management of utilization, if hospitals and managed care organizations can control treatment utilization, they can control premium costs for both themselves and their customers (Rodwin 1996). If health care organizations can implement prevention as a way to warrant good health with their consumers, insurance companies can also illuminate unnecessary health care. These are just a few examples of how the health care industry can help benefit their patients, but that does not mean every issue involving physician over utilization or quality of care is erased because there is a management mechanism set in place.
A merger is a partial or total combination of two separate business firms and forming of a new one. There are predominantly two kinds of mergers: partial and complete. Partial merger usually involves the combination of joint ventures and inter-corporate stock purchases. Complete mergers are results in blending of identities and the creation of a single succeeding firm. (Hicks, 2012, p 491). Mergers in the healthcare sector, particularly horizontal hospital mergers wherein two or more hospitals merge into a single corporation, are increasing both in frequency and importance. (Gaughan, 2002). This paper is an attempt to study the impact of the merger of two competing healthcare organization and will also attempt to propose appropriate clinical and managerial interventions.
Formed in 1998, the Managed Care Executive Group (MCEG) is a national organization of U.S. senior health executives who provide an open exchange of shared resources by discussing issues which are currently faced by health care organizations. In the fall of 2011, 61 organizations, which represented 90 responders, ranked the top ten strategic issues for 2012. Although the issues were ranked according to their priority, this report discusses the top three issues which I believe to be the most significant due to the need for competitive and inter-related products, quality care and cost containment.
Competitive advantage matters greatly to those responsible for the management of healthcare institutions. Together with rapidly escalating healthcare costs, increasingly complex medical technologies, and growing regulatory and legal pressures, healthcare organizations face a critical need to improve the quality of care at reduced costs (Cu...
William Collinge quotes Chuang Tzu in his American Holistic Health Association Complete Guide to Alternative Medicine saying, "Heaven, Earth and I are living together, and all things and I form an inseparable unity" (13). Tzu's comment contrasts the traditional American dream of individualistic power and solidarity, but no matter how ethnocentric or arrogant the Western society can be at times, the influence of the world is still present. The health care system is a prime example of how the unification between world cultures brings benefits to society. The Western culture has been developing and refining scientific methods of health care for centuries. Illnesses that were incurable in the past are now treatable with drug medications and by complex surgeries. But along with the absence of the old illnesses, come new ones. People are living longer and chronic and degenerative illnesses are more common. Due to the development of new illnesses, Western medicine has been consulting the traditions and treatments from other cultures for aid in diagnosis and health care. In The American Holistic Health Association Complete Guide to Alternative Medicine, William Collinge states that, "the joining together of conventional and alternative traditions may well permit us to have a more balanced quality of life. At the least, it has helped to bring the concept of health back to medicine" (Collinge xxi). Collinge's use the word "balance" in his description of the quality of life is interesting, because a form of alternative medicine whose central focus is on the balance of the body is Chinese medicine. Due to the onslaught of new chronic and degenerative illnesses, Western culture initiated the search for ...
Health Care workers are constantly faced with legal and ethical issues every day during the course of their work. It is important that the health care workers have a clear understanding of these legal and ethical issues that they will face (1). In the case study analysed key legal and ethical issues arise during the initial decision-making of the incident, when the second ambulance crew arrived, throughout the treatment and during the transfer of patient to the hospital. The ethical issues in this case can be described as what the paramedic believes is the right thing to do for the patient and the legal issues control what the law describes that the paramedic should do in this situation (2, 3). It is therefore important that paramedics also
Healthcare organizations are designed to meet the healthcare needs of individuals and promote a healthy community. The three healthcare organizations that interest me are: The Heart Hospital Baylor of Plano, Texas Health Center for Diagnostics & Surgery Plan, and Parkland Health and Hospital System. Due to the evolving healthcare industry, focusing on just patients and physicians is no longer a marketing strategy. According to Mycek (2015), “Marketing teams need to expand their consideration set and focus on the new 5 P’s of Healthcare Marketing” (p. 1).
Mergers and acquisitions immediately impact organizations with changes of rights, and ideas and eventually, in practice. There are multiple reasons some are motives and financial forces just to name a few. There are financial risks of merging with or acquiring an organization this is why you must have a strategic plan in place in order to benefit.
When two companies decide to combine forces and become one bigger, richer mega company, it is called merging. This process forms a new company, combining the money and ideas of what used to be two different entities into one. This, however, is not the only thing that results from merging two different companies, and since we will be discussing the merging of two companies in the pharmaceutical industry, the impact will be incredible. Of course, the merging of two companies will not only have positive impacts but it will have many negative side effects as well. Furthermore, depending on the size of the merging companies and the goals of the people leading these companies there will always be contradictions according to the long-term goals or short-term goals depending on what both parties’ interests are. Our company, Verduga Inc. is contemplating to merge with Coronado-Salinas Inc., so before we rush into such a merger we must contemplate the positive and negative aspects of such a move. When it comes to mergers there are always many possible positive and negative impacts due to the effects of merging; these effects more widely impact the fields on research and development, on employment and management, stocks and shareholders, monopolization, and ingenuity.