Question Details

Please read: Weber, D. O. & Weber, A. L. (1994). Reshaping the American hospital. The Healthcare Forum Journal. San Francisco: Sep/Oct 1994. Vol. 37, Iss. 5; Abstract: Across the US, hundreds of healthcare organizations have launched or are pondering initiatives to overhaul needlessly complex, redundant, narrow, and wasteful hospital structures and processes. Coined in the late 1980s, the term "patient focused care" has embedded itself solidly in health care industry jargon. The trouble is, there is no formal definition to decribe and delimit the components of a patient-focused healthcare system. The trailblazing institutions cautiously started with one or 2 pilot units. Typically those were inpatient areas with fairly homogeneous populations. One of the first drawbacks was the high front-end cost associated with the elaborate data collection, cross-training, and especially the physical reconfiguration efforts that characterized early patient-focused restructurings. Starting in July 1994, Alliant Health System triggered the first of 3 hospital-wide "waves" in which most of its 4,200 employees are being deployed to newly developed patient-centered care areas (PCC). Click here for the full article. The author provides examples of structural design changes undertaken by several hospitals. Choose two (2) hospitals and elaborate on their implemented change, in light of the module's background materials. Show how these changes "fit" within and to a healthcare organization