Glens Falls Hospital Strengths And Weaknesses

Introduction:
It is important for all businesses to understand and observe their strengths and weaknesses. How the organization adapts and changes to fix it’s weaknesses determines the overall success of the business. The Glens Falls Hospital, like all organizations, has a variety of good and bad qualities. Geographically, the Glens Falls Hospital is the largest hospital facility from Albany, New York to Montreal, Canada (About Glens Falls Hospital, 2018). They offer 26 different hospital services ranging from sleep disorders to wound healing, and snuggerys. With such a large geographic reach, the different hospital services are very useful for their organization. Since 2017, the Glens Falls Hospital has hired two new board members. It is important

to bring in fresh faces and new ideas to an organization, especially one changing with so much new technology and advancements in the medical field.The Glens Falls Hospital maintains a respectable and well known reputation among the community. They place high value on quality, patient centered care and exhibit this through their highly trained clinical staff. The Glens Falls Hospital provides a safe and secure treatment facility, staffed with security and metal detectors, as well as locked doors only accessible with an ID badge for patient protection.

This among many other things, sets the Glens Falls Hospital apart from its surrounding competition.

Strengths and Weaknesses:
Recently, it has been awarded a 20 million dollar grant from New York State, the largest grant in hospital history. This grant is to fund a medical village and allows Glens Falls Hospital a vast amount of opportunity for the expansion of its medical empire. From a community standpoint, as a non-profit organization, Glens Falls Hospital honors and commits to helping anybody in need of medical care, regardless of their financial status. This sets the organization apart from competing healthcare facilities in the area. For those without insurance, they are offer a mail in form which delivers financial assistance anywhere from 20% to 100% of the cost of their treatment, based on their income. Although I consider this a strength, it can also be viewed as a weakness. Each year the Glens Falls Hospital gives treatments knowing they will never be reimbursed for doing so. This creates a financial burden for the hospital. Another downfall of the Glens Falls

Hospital lies in staff turnover. Specifically patient access in the emergency room, the department is currently under review due to such a high number of turnover rates. The cost of training employees and then essentially not having them workout is another financial burden on the hospital. After speaking with coworkers, I found that lower management is the reason behind this turnover rate. During my interview, I was told the schedule comes out a month in advance. It turns out it comes out the 1st of the month in question and then changes anywhere from five to six times in the first week. Staff is also not notified of the changes in the schedule and are only emailed the original schedule. This lack of organization is negatively affecting their retention rate. Other coworkers explained that those who had been there longer assumed smaller responsibilities no longer applied to there and overloaded the newer employees with work they were asked to do. This has lead to disgruntled employees whom do not enjoy coming to work with certain people. As for me, being fairly new, I have had no problems currently and enjoy working in the high paced environment. The security in the emergency room is very well executed so I never fear my safety when police officers bring in a variety of different characters. The emergency room wait time is another weakness of the Glens Falls Hospital. Online, it states the average wait time to be 30 minutes. I have found this time to be difficult to determine due to the different volume of people coming through on different days of the week. Although, there is a rather long wait time, a strength of the Glens Falls Hospital emergency room is determining the level of urgency for each patient in the emergency room and ensuring they are seen in accordance to that. Prioritizing urgency patients is key in successfully treating these patients. The Glens Falls Hospital is a completely digitized facility. This is very crucial to timely patient care, and maintaining correct records for patients. However, technology has its fair share of problems and the wifi in the hospital sometimes crashing losing data for any open patient, causing a waste of time for staff re entering all of the information.
Opportunities and Threats:
The Glens Falls Hospital being a recipient of a 20 million dollar grant has put them on the fast track for technology development.

The new medical village will increase the amount of patients able to be seen and treated in a positive way. It also ensures an increase in technology development. The Glens Falls Hospital being a non-profit organization, relies also on donations from the community on top of grants from the state of New York. It hosts walks, runs, and other events in order to continue receiving these benefits and does so successfully, to say the least. However, if the economy were to shift, this has a direct impact on the flow of donations the hospital receives, which is essentially out of their control. The Glens Falls Hospital has affiliations with other health organizations in the community such as Hudson Headwaters. The ability to coexist with competing organizations is a true test of a successful organization. The Albany Medical Center is a large threat to the Glens Falls Hospital. The Albany Medical Center offers more treatment options and is an overall larger facility. I would estimate at least once a day, a patient from the emergency room in the Glens Falls Hospital is transferred to the Albany Medical Center due to the hospital being unable to properly treat the patient. It is important for the Glens Falls Hospital to understand when it is appropriate to transfer a patient. The Glens Falls Hospital has noted which patient types are often transferred and

are making adjustments to further development their treatment centers for these facilities. Most recently, the hospital has been expanding their ability to treat stroke victims. Before, they were transferring any and all patients showing signs of stroke. Now, they retain about half and are working towards being fully trained and having the equipment to treat all of them. Lastly, the government policies are a large threat to the Glens Falls Hospital. There are an excessive amount of fines and decertification risks due to improper running of the hospital. With construction finishing, government officials will soon be coming in to ensure the safety regulations have been met by the facility. From a patient standpoint, we are constantly reminded the importance of receiving signatures from those we treat. These signatures give consent for patient treatment, privacy policies, medical records, and insurance billing. Without these consent signatures, the hospital could find itself in a lawsuit. All and all, the Glens Falls Hospital is a well run organization. With the new changes coming in the near future, I am excited to see the success and help it will bring to my community.