Health Service Management - Paper Example

The enactment of any business venture can be a daunting experience. This is because it requires an extensive market research for it to be profitable in the market. In the United States, there has been a high number of medical institutions, which has been enacted over the last 20-30 years. This research focuses on the social, political and economic factors that have contributed to the increment of medical institutions in the United States. The research also creates a comprehensive mission statement for a startup medical clinic and provides a direction that such a clinic can use to grow. Ultimately, the research outlines the factors to consider before deciding the services to offer in a clinic and measures of evaluating the attainment of its goal.

Key Social, Political and Economic Factors That Have Led to The Proliferation of Urgent Care Facilities and Primary Care Practices

The number of urgent care institutions and the volume of primary care services offered in such institutions has increased tremendously over the last two decades. This significant increase has been attributed to key social, political as well as economic factors in the United States.

Social Factors

The demographic changes in the United States are among the primary factors that have led to an increase in the scale of medical services offered to patients. For example, in 1987, the total population of people in the United States was 242.29 million CITATION Mul17 \l 1033 (Multpl, 2017). Nevertheless, by October 2017, this population had changed to 325.99 million persons CITATION Mul17 \l 1033 (Multpl, 2017). Such a massive increase in the nations population has subsequently increased the healthcare needs of the people. Additionally, to meet such demands, the healthcare practitioners and investors have enacted multiple medical facilities in the nation to offer primary care services to the large national population.

Moreover, the proliferation of urgent medical care facilities and the services offered to patients in the nation has also increased due to the emergence of new infectious diseases over the last two decades. Additionally, this is classified as a social problem because most of such diseases are transmitted through social acts, such as unprotected intercourse. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is among such diseases, which has already been classified as a global disaster CITATION HIV08 \l 1033 (Lancet, 2008). Today, 1.1 million persons are living with HIV in the United States CITATION CDC172 \l 1033 (CDC, 2017). Consequently, the high demand for healthcare services in the nation has increased, leading to an increase in the number of urgent care facilities being built in the United States.

Economic Factors

The high cost of obtaining healthcare services in the United States has increased tremendously over the last two decades. Today, the healthcare industry is estimated to be valued approximately $ 3 billion CITATION IGl17 \l 1033 (Cohen, 2017). Consequently, this has attracted numerous medical facility investors from different parts of the world. Most of such investors have ventured into the United States healthcare sector for economic gain. Additionally, this has led to an increase in the total number of hospitals built in the United States as well as the scale of primary care services offered to the public. According to the report made by the Urgent Care Association of America (UCAOA), in 2016, there were approximately 7,100 urgent care medical facilities in the United States CITATION UCA16 \l 1033 (UCAOA, 2016).

Furthermore, the medical profession has been one of the most profitable careers in the United States. Consequently, this has led to an elevation in the number of learners in the higher learning institutions taking medicine-related courses. According to a reported survey published on the Forbes website (2017), some of the most well-paid professions in America are in the medical and healthcare field CITATION Kar17 \l 1033 (Strauss, 2017). For example, the Forbes reported that anesthesiologists in the United States earn an average annual salary of $350,000 CITATION Kar17 \l 1033 (Strauss, 2017). Ultimately, due to the profitability of the medical professions, the United States has experienced an increase in the number of medical institutions and healthcare services being offered in the nation.

Political Factors

Over the last few decades, the United States has experienced a significantly stable political environment. Today, the United States has become one of the most democratic nations in the world. Consequently, such an environment has promoted the growth of many industries in the nation, including the healthcare sector. Consequently, this has resulted in an increment in the number of urgent care facilities that have been constructed in the nation.

Furthermore, the United States has enacted a number of healthcare-related programs like Medicare and Medicaid to offer assistance to the public in accessing quality healthcare services. As a result, more medical facility investors have become confident to build more urgent care facilities in the nation, owing to the availability of finance to pay for medical programs. In this case, the medical finances for patients accessing various medical services in the numerous medical facilities in the nation are available due to the stable government support offered through governmental healthcare programs.

Comprehensive Mission Statement for the Clinic

At the clinic, we acknowledge the value of all persons, and we are also steered by our commitment to excellence as well as leadership. We portray this through offering exemplary healthcare service to each of our clients and their families. Moreover, we balance our continued onus to providing care for the poor as well as those in dire need for the access of highly focused healthcare services to the local community. Also, we are focused on offering all our clients with quality healthcare education to manage their medical conditions on their own with limited medical assistance. Ultimately, our medical professionals maintain the tradition of caring as well as the quality of presence, which are the landmarks of our healthcare institution.

This comprehensive mission statement for the clinic will facilitate the provision of medical services in several ways. First, it will portray their commitment to providing high-quality healthcare services to all its clients. Moreover, it will also explain to its targeted audience that it will be offering good quality healthcare services to poor persons or patients from a low economic background at the local community. In this case, these are also the patients who experience a financial constraint in accessing the other urgent care services in the region. Ultimately, the mission statement will communicate to the targeted patients that it will be committed to offering the quality education on how to manage their medical conditions with limited resources.

Directions for the Clinic to Grow Its Business

There are several strategies that the clinic can employ to grow its business. First, the clinic should target on offering a broad range of urgent care services at reduced prices. That is in comparison to the other medical institutions that are already operating in the region. Also, since it will be focused on providing affordable care services to the low-income persons in the community, it is bound to attract a large number of patients to its establishment. Consequently, the high number of such patients will bring out a lot of cumulative revenue for the startup, which will then be used to promote the clinics development.

Furthermore, the clinic should focus on building its reputation in its region of operation, through provisioning high-quality healthcare services. According to Gupta and Rokade (2016), quality is a fundamental aspect that should be enforced in the healthcare sector. Moreover, through quality healthcare provision, the rate of patients healthcare outcome will significantly increase. Subsequently, this will make more patients in the targeted region prefer the clinic to other urgent care services operating in the same region. Eventually, with the increased number of patients visiting the clinic, the establishment will attain a large amount of revenue, which it can use to grow its business.

Factors to Consider When Deciding Which Services the Clinic Should Offer In-House and Which Ones to Affiliate with Other Medical Institutions

First, the clinic should consider the cost of acquiring the medical equipment to use in providing various urgent care services to its targeted clients. This is an important factor to consider because the cost of some medical equipment can be remarkably high, especially for a new startup. For example, an ultra modern 3 Tesla MRI machine can cost up to $ 3 million to buy (Glover, 2014). Such a high cost could be expensive for the clinic, and such render it to affiliate with the other institutions in the region to acquire the equipment. Furthermore, the clinic must also consider the qualifications of its staff before making a decision on which services to offer in-house.

In this case, the clinic may lack medical practitioners who are specialized in offering certain crucial urgent care services to patients. Subsequently, in such a case, the clinic could opt to affiliate with the other medical institutions in the region in providing such healthcare services. Additionally, such a case could be possible if the affiliated medical institutions have specialists capable of handling specialized clinical tasks. Ultimately, the clinic should also determine the nature of its targeted clients before deciding which tasks it should offer at the clinic. In this case, the clinic will be attending mostly to low-income earners, and as such, it should not offer complex and expensive treatment as part of its services.

Determining Whether the Clinic Is Attaining Its Goal and Three Performance Measurement That Will Be Used to Evaluate the Clinics Services

In order to determine whether the clinic is meeting its goals, a person can use key performance indicators (KPIs). These are quantifiable values that can be employed to evaluate how effectively an organization achieves its business objectives (Marr, 2012). The goal of the clinic is to attain revenue from sales of urgent care drugs and services, attainment of customer satisfaction as well as retention of loyal clients for the clinic.

There are three KPIs that can be used to evaluate the success of the clinic based on the attainment of its goal. The first KPI is the retail metric that can be employed to evaluate the total sales made by the clinic. Second, customer satisfaction KPI can be used to measure the satisfaction rate of patients at the clinic based on their healthcare outcome. Lastly, the clinic can use customer retention metric to ascertain the number of clients that the clinic has for healthcare needs.

Addressing Opportunities for Improvement That May Occur

After establishing the clinic, the manager should ensure that he/she secures the opportunity and implements it to improve the performance of the clinic. This can be achieved by creating a rainy day fund that could be employed in the opportunitys implementation process. Moreover, the clinics management department should seek aggressive human resource managers capable of training the other medical personnel on how to implement the particulars of an opportunity. This is for the benefit of the clinic should such an opportunity arise. Lastly, in the process of preparing for an opportunity, the clinic administrators should hire an aggressive medical research team, capable of seeking the validity and profitability of any emergent opportunity before its implementation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the pro...