Heritage Health & Rehabilitation Center Case Study

Formally known as Heritage Health & Rehabilitation Center, Heritage Healthcare Center is a 180 bed short term and long term skilled nursing facility located in Tallahassee, FL. It provides a number of services to the general public, like speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, short term acute care and long term care. This facility also offers a number of amenities that make each and every resident feel comfortable. There have been services, like a hair salon, activities department and trips to the mall all included in each patient’s rate at the facility.
However, based on all these benefits and services that are provided, over the last decade they have been hit with numerous fines and citations that affect the organization as a whole (Agency for Health Care Administration, n.d.). Many of the public records complaints include: staffing issues, staff are incompetent, no care plans and inadequate care of the residents. Furthermore, the one major challenge that I faced at the

facility was the lack of human resource management and leadership.
Description of the challenge
The human resource department of any healthcare facility is a major part in the success of the organization. The roles and duties of traditional human resource management includes: recruiting and selection, training and development, appraisal, compensation, and employee relations (Fried, & Fottler, 2011, pg. 3). Although, at this facility, a number of these duties were left up to other departments within the organization to fill each void. The only recruiting and selection that is done is via word-of-mouth, made by friends and family or previous employees. Training and development was typically done by the Director of Nursing, who was either always in meetings or new (due to the lack of employee retention). They heavily depended on the nursing staff to fulfill their continuing education hours online independently or do not provide various alternatives for their staff to receive the credit hours. The process of employee appraisals or feedback was never given unless a write-up was provided to that employee. Negative feedback was the only appraisal that staff received. This not only created a lower motivation level of the staff, but also aided in the organization’s low employee retention rates.
Compensation was the only aspect that the human resource department provided to each employee and for a staff of over 40, there was only one person who constituted as the payroll specialist. This not only frustrated employees about the questions that they had related to their finances, but it also caused confusion when it came time for pay increases. Since there was no fully effectively HR department, important documents, such as direct deposit slip sheets or hire date data was lost or incorrect. In addition, employee relations was done by anyone who knew the answer, and due to the lack of organization, the information being dispersed to the staff was usually inaccurate and always changed. One of the aspects that was immediately noticed, in my opinion, was the culture of the facility. A healthy facility needs to have the appropriate leadership that can improve all aspects within the organization.
What has happened so far
Under the last 2 months of me being employed at the facility, the Director of Nursing decided to try to fix the low amount of staff by introducing an “on-call” requirement for all licensed staff. This action mostly affected the nurses, but especially the Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA). At the time I was a struggling CNA who also went to college full time. For me, this put a strain on the amount of time I had to sleep, study and decreased the time I had to spend with my family. I ended up reporting them to the state because in Florida CNAs were not required by law to be “on-call”. This obviously did not work in their favor and a number of employees quit or either reported them to the state as well. Currently, a lot of the staff who worked there for years and still to this day work there state that they stopped nursing staff “on-call” a while ago, however, still lack the human resource department that they need in order to be a successful organization.
Solutions as a HR consultant
The human resource management is vital in the continued success of Heritage Healthcare Center.

Some of the recommendations that I would implement would mostly consist of changing the way the administration and nursing staff communicate. Having organization and strong leadership goes a long way in a skilled nursing facility. The first issue that would be addressed are the ways to increase employee retention. Both internal and external recruitment methods should be utilized to get the word out about this organization, as well as provide the existing staff with ways to increase their compensation within the company. In order to achieve this, the director of nursing, administrator, and human resource department should periodically get together to discuss the patient: employee ratio and discuss methods various ways to decrease employee retention. Besides giving staff the option of internal recruitment for newly available positions, incentives should be discussed

also.
The secondary important challenge to address is improving the ways in which training, education and development are provided to the nursing staff. A developmental strategy should be implemented to focus on nursing training. One of the main goals of any healthcare organization should be to provide effective and efficient care, so enhancing organizational development would be the ideal next step. As technology advances, education and proper training are necessary. Various feedback methods for each nursing staff can be comprised of: directly observing workers, checking and been up to date with professional standards, conducting surveys and frequently reviewing care plans and medical records randomly for errors (Fried, & Fottler, 2011, pg. 142). Once these changes are implemented then the changes needs to improve leadership within the organization should be done to fulfill and accommodate the organization’s needs. Education and training techniques can be improved through providing monthly in-service hours, meetings to keep staff up-to-date, and CPR training offered quarterly for those who need it.
Conclusion
Heritage Healthcare Center is an organization that has had human resource and leadership faults, that led to decreasing employee retention rates, low employee morale and inadequate training and leadership for their staff. In order for this organization to continue to be a successful for-profit entity, they need to change the ways in which information is dispersed amongst their employees and continuously improve the relationship and interaction between the administration and the nursing staff. Although human resource management is a broad topic that covers multiple topics, it is the responsibility of the human resource department to enforce the rules that will meet the organization’s mission and goals, as well as provide quality care to the population, but not at the expense of their nursing and administrative staff.